Meet the cheese-making robot on the daily rind

The process of making cheddar cheese in Somerset is about as traditional and old fashioned as you can get, but one artisan producer has moved it right into the 21st Century.

Westcombe Dairy in Evercreech has brought in a robot, the first of its kind in the UK, to look after its store of 5000 maturing cheeses. It slowly moves along the aisles, plucking each one from the shelf and turning it over.

Making the best traditional Somerset cheddar is a long process - the cheeses on these shelves are matured for up to eighteen months but they aren't just left untouched. They have to be turned, to make sure the moisture doesn't all settle to the bottom and they don't stick to the shelves.

When it was done by hand, they used to be turned maybe three times during their lives - with this new robot it can be as often as once a week.

They got the idea from Gruyere and Comte cheesemakers in Switzerland who use robots to turn their cheese but Westcombe is the first dairy in the UK doing it.

While the storage and ageing process has been modernised, the cheesemaking is still done the old fashioned way, by hand - this is one of the few artisan Somerset cheddar makers left and there's no desire to bring any robots in here. In the dairy - tradition rules.

Handing control of 5000 cheeses to a robot babysitter that looks like it might have been dreamt up by Wallace and Gromit made them nervous to begin with but thankfully it hasn't started throwing them around the store yet.

Take a look at the robot in action: