- Feb 14, 2004
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I really like automated solutions to things, starting with smarthome technology many years ago & then going into the professional side of things with being able to work on a variety of machine tools like multi-axis CNC machines, analog-to-digital machine conversions with retrofit kits, etc. in different types of shops, and lately branching off into food production automation (bakeries, chocolate chops, candy shops, pizza shops, etc.).
I had a chance to do some site visits this week, including one to a progressively automated production farm. I've done consulting with a few smaller farms before & have worked with neat stuff like GPS auto-steer tractors & so on (don't even get me started on the right-to-repair side of that story, ugh), but I've never seen dairy automation before. And it's BANANAS! Here's an intro video:
If you're up for a bit of reading, it's quite a well-thought-out ecosystem. The system breaks into 4 parts:
1. Collar tracker
2. Housing & cleaning
3. Feeding
4. Milking
So the workflow starts out like this:
1. Each cow has a collar around the neck, which is kind of like a Fitbit for the animal
2. There's a visual numbering system for the farmer
3. It can track all kinds of data, like rumination & how many minutes were spent feeding
4. It provides access to the automated & roboticized systems on the farm (like a wireless keyfob for a car)
Cleaning the animals & the housing, plus the housing itself, has added automation:
1. There's basically an industrial roomba that cleans the barn 24/7/365...it has water spray, scrubbers, and can be scheduled to avoid the cows based on a schedule. Even has a self-charging system! So the barn floor stays nice & clean all day long without human intervention.
2. Separately, there's a giant spinning brush, similar to the kind you see in a car wash. So basically a self-use cow massage. The cows looooooooove this thing!
3. There's a special walkway that acts as a footbath for cleaning their feet & to reduce diseases.
4. They have basically an industrial version of a home automation lighting system to provide the cows with stimulation lighting, as well as a special night-time mode. The cows need a full night's worth of darkness (8 hours), but they can't see red light very well, so the barn automation flips into "submarine mode" & turns on red lighting so you can work at night, but the cows can chill out.
Here's a video of the robot cleaner, and you can see their new robot feeding system in the background in some shots:
The feeding system has several options:
1. Calf feeding system, which is an automatic feeder that supplies milk at the proper temperature & tracks milk intake for each animal
2. Individual feeding system, which is used for a variety of reasons, like if a particular cow isn't getting its fair share & needs to have restricted access to food, or if you want to track food to milking ratios via data collection to get optimal results.
3. Automated bulk feeding system, so the cows can stick their heads out of the gate to get the feed
4. Robot management bulk feeding system, which ties in with #3. I didn't get a chance to see this (they were still building out their automated dairy production system), but here's a video of the unit in action - it reminded me a lot of those basic robots from Star Wars on Tatooine. It's basically just a glorified roomba, but still is a very cool system nonetheless! It can go from building to building too, using a line-following system (like those little kits you built from science magazines) & have basically a HomeLink system to open the garage doors by themselves. Really really clever:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INbqPz5PxNg
The milking system is the most crazy part:
1. There's a NY subway-style access gate for releasing the cow to graze
2. The milking system is highly automated
3. The cows self-serve on the machine...as needed, they'll wander up to it to get milked
4. The system tracks which cows went through during the day & which need to be manually led over. They have Android & iPhone apps for alerts & data & all kinds of stuff:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lely-t4c-inherd-today/id628447660?mt=8
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.lely.mobile.tasks
The milking machine itself is pretty awesome:
1. The cow walks in & the system drops a gate around the animal
2. There's a robot arm that sticks out under the udder
3. A laser scans each teat & then places a suction tube on them one-by-one
4. When finished, a brush cleans the udder & then the brush gets a cleaning spray afterwards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjSZMLhx4-I
From there, you can pipe it into your downstream milk management system, using compressed air instead of impeller blades, so that milk doesn't get messed with. The farm I was at ran it down a separate system, which eventually pasteurized it & bottled it. The milkfat content was nearly 4% & the quality was just phenomenal. Like, milk is good & all, especially with something like a cookie or some cereal, but this milk was so good that you could literally just drink it cold with nothing else & feel happy lol.
I dabble in a very small IT niche on the systems integration side of things, but it's super fun to see all of the insane progress wherein technology has been applied to centuries-old systems that humans have had to deal with. Not only is their integration incredible, but the variable nature of the automated milking system was just really amazing to see in action...I've never seen a physical machine tool handle that variable of an input system (animal size, animal weight, udder size, teat distribution on the udder, movement of the animal, all using laser scanners & other sensors to get it right & truly automate the milking process) & be as reliable & efficient as this setup was!
I don't know the exact specs, but each machine was slated for about 50 cows a day. Previously, the farm staff had to wake up crazy early in the morning and spend hours & hours milking a zillion cows, and skipping milking is not an option...even if they waited a few hours too long to milk the animals, the high-producers would wig out due to the pain, and could even get an infection & die from not being milked, so it's a critical job. This system basically automated it 98% of the way, save for a few cows that needed to be manually led to the machine for automated milking each day.
Anyway, I thought it was really cool, so I thought I'd share, especially since none of the other farms I've been too have had this level of automation installed on the premises...it was like looking into the future! The cows were happier, healthier, produced more milk, and reduced the manual workload requirement significantly. Also, if you're interested in the plant-based side of things (with enhanced technological integration), check out my other post here:
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/who-has-had-an-impossible-burger.2555102/#post-39608258
I had a chance to do some site visits this week, including one to a progressively automated production farm. I've done consulting with a few smaller farms before & have worked with neat stuff like GPS auto-steer tractors & so on (don't even get me started on the right-to-repair side of that story, ugh), but I've never seen dairy automation before. And it's BANANAS! Here's an intro video:
If you're up for a bit of reading, it's quite a well-thought-out ecosystem. The system breaks into 4 parts:
1. Collar tracker
2. Housing & cleaning
3. Feeding
4. Milking
So the workflow starts out like this:
1. Each cow has a collar around the neck, which is kind of like a Fitbit for the animal
2. There's a visual numbering system for the farmer
3. It can track all kinds of data, like rumination & how many minutes were spent feeding
4. It provides access to the automated & roboticized systems on the farm (like a wireless keyfob for a car)
Cleaning the animals & the housing, plus the housing itself, has added automation:
1. There's basically an industrial roomba that cleans the barn 24/7/365...it has water spray, scrubbers, and can be scheduled to avoid the cows based on a schedule. Even has a self-charging system! So the barn floor stays nice & clean all day long without human intervention.
2. Separately, there's a giant spinning brush, similar to the kind you see in a car wash. So basically a self-use cow massage. The cows looooooooove this thing!
3. There's a special walkway that acts as a footbath for cleaning their feet & to reduce diseases.
4. They have basically an industrial version of a home automation lighting system to provide the cows with stimulation lighting, as well as a special night-time mode. The cows need a full night's worth of darkness (8 hours), but they can't see red light very well, so the barn automation flips into "submarine mode" & turns on red lighting so you can work at night, but the cows can chill out.
Here's a video of the robot cleaner, and you can see their new robot feeding system in the background in some shots:
The feeding system has several options:
1. Calf feeding system, which is an automatic feeder that supplies milk at the proper temperature & tracks milk intake for each animal
2. Individual feeding system, which is used for a variety of reasons, like if a particular cow isn't getting its fair share & needs to have restricted access to food, or if you want to track food to milking ratios via data collection to get optimal results.
3. Automated bulk feeding system, so the cows can stick their heads out of the gate to get the feed
4. Robot management bulk feeding system, which ties in with #3. I didn't get a chance to see this (they were still building out their automated dairy production system), but here's a video of the unit in action - it reminded me a lot of those basic robots from Star Wars on Tatooine. It's basically just a glorified roomba, but still is a very cool system nonetheless! It can go from building to building too, using a line-following system (like those little kits you built from science magazines) & have basically a HomeLink system to open the garage doors by themselves. Really really clever:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INbqPz5PxNg
The milking system is the most crazy part:
1. There's a NY subway-style access gate for releasing the cow to graze
2. The milking system is highly automated
3. The cows self-serve on the machine...as needed, they'll wander up to it to get milked
4. The system tracks which cows went through during the day & which need to be manually led over. They have Android & iPhone apps for alerts & data & all kinds of stuff:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lely-t4c-inherd-today/id628447660?mt=8
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.lely.mobile.tasks
The milking machine itself is pretty awesome:
1. The cow walks in & the system drops a gate around the animal
2. There's a robot arm that sticks out under the udder
3. A laser scans each teat & then places a suction tube on them one-by-one
4. When finished, a brush cleans the udder & then the brush gets a cleaning spray afterwards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjSZMLhx4-I
From there, you can pipe it into your downstream milk management system, using compressed air instead of impeller blades, so that milk doesn't get messed with. The farm I was at ran it down a separate system, which eventually pasteurized it & bottled it. The milkfat content was nearly 4% & the quality was just phenomenal. Like, milk is good & all, especially with something like a cookie or some cereal, but this milk was so good that you could literally just drink it cold with nothing else & feel happy lol.
I dabble in a very small IT niche on the systems integration side of things, but it's super fun to see all of the insane progress wherein technology has been applied to centuries-old systems that humans have had to deal with. Not only is their integration incredible, but the variable nature of the automated milking system was just really amazing to see in action...I've never seen a physical machine tool handle that variable of an input system (animal size, animal weight, udder size, teat distribution on the udder, movement of the animal, all using laser scanners & other sensors to get it right & truly automate the milking process) & be as reliable & efficient as this setup was!
I don't know the exact specs, but each machine was slated for about 50 cows a day. Previously, the farm staff had to wake up crazy early in the morning and spend hours & hours milking a zillion cows, and skipping milking is not an option...even if they waited a few hours too long to milk the animals, the high-producers would wig out due to the pain, and could even get an infection & die from not being milked, so it's a critical job. This system basically automated it 98% of the way, save for a few cows that needed to be manually led to the machine for automated milking each day.
Anyway, I thought it was really cool, so I thought I'd share, especially since none of the other farms I've been too have had this level of automation installed on the premises...it was like looking into the future! The cows were happier, healthier, produced more milk, and reduced the manual workload requirement significantly. Also, if you're interested in the plant-based side of things (with enhanced technological integration), check out my other post here:
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/who-has-had-an-impossible-burger.2555102/#post-39608258
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