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Motivation for an autonomous milking ongoing robot (AMOR)

An autonomous system results in the following dis-/advantages:

• + Indepence (no more need to be there to milk morning and evening, 7days/week)
• - Machine service increases
• + Technical knowledge increases, hence perhaps some other good robot ideas may evolve.
• + Cows/Goats/Sheep can decide themselves when to get milked.
• + Concentrated feed can be delivered automatically and according to milk delivered.
• - Animals' possible illness not realized early enough. => Action taken too late. => Animal could die.
• - Gathering at Milking robot leaves behind a lot of unusable muddy terrain at entrance (doors in general).
• - Higher complexity in separation of milk for calves, though of course possible.
• + Driving out and in of cattle no longer necessary as animals can get milked outside.
• + Less material required (much shorter vacuum and milk tubes as compared to conventional non-automated distributed [at cow/goat..] milking)
• ... and several others.

An ongoing system results in the following (dis-)advantages:

• - Higher complexity.
• + Independance of any external supplies.

   ** Water (heavily dependent on environment)
   ** Power (Solar/Heat/Water/MFC replaces Grid)
   ** Food (difficult, nevertheless this is planned for later revisions of AMOR)

• - Redundancy of susceptible subsystems (Electronics, in general: The more complex the system the higher the vulnerability).
• + Less cabling, water pipe laying and bundled maintenance (as you can wait for enough minor errors to accumulate before taking the system apart).
• ... and several others.

High Level Overview

PDF Version: REV2, Improved & interconnected.

Separation in Subproblems & Technological Difficulties

AMOR of several submodules:

• MECHANICAL CONSTRUCTION
  • - Difficult to achieve a robust, lightweight (for truck to lift) & cheap system at the same time.
  • + Rain serves as a water supply and natural (ecologic) and self-sustained washing. -> So AMOR must be waterproof!
• VACUUM SYSTEM
  • - Difficult to be flexible in frequency (provide user settings) and keep it simple at the same time.
  • + Could be used for several other functionality than milking (doors, ...). => No hydraulics needed. Update: We have settled on keeping it all electric as it's much cheaper and we need electricity anyway.
  • Note: As the robotic manipulator should be flexible anyway as it could be hit by the cow, compressible air/vacuum could serve this purpose, too - but price of vacuum cylinders and the vulnerability to leakage remains a problem.
  • Vacuum pump: Any pump should do, as the required vacuum levels are low and we don't have a lot of volume to keep free of gases in a mobile system because there is not much piping.
• STORAGE CONSTRUCTION
  • Milk
  • Food
  • Water
  • Energy
  • Database for animals milk (amount, properties, ...)
  • Database for organization of the cow's fertile cycle, ...
• SENSORICS
  • Milk properties (flow rate, derivations of that, TODO)
  • Robotic manipulator (3D camera, washing mechanism)
  • Animal within milking construction => Door states.
• ELECTRONICS
  • Control of Doors.
  • Control of Feeding (derived from amount of milk), but also accept some user constraints (lower / upper bounds for each type of food respectively).
  • Control of Robotic manipulator (joints, gripper).
  • Collection & storage of the stored animal & product data.
• SOFTWARE
  • Microcontroller programs capable of controlling at least two AMOR system blocks (stacked next to each other).
  • compare ELECTRONICS.

Mechanic structure

The mechanic structure is free to choose. Builders might have their own preference of how to assemble a milking robot structure. Some may choose to bolt sqaure beams together, the others might prefer welding (Schweissen) steel or if they have a TIG (Tungsten) welder even aluminium.

For convenience I design and post my structure as a base and hope you give back your improvements to it by mentioning it in the forum, uploading to our repository or any other possibiity you see as appropriate.. [1]

Video of Prototyp 3 CAD

This video demonstrates how the robotic manipulator is about to work as well as the door mechanism: <video></video>

Power system

Several ideas for autonomous power can be found in the forum. The easiest solution for now will be to attach a truck or emergency generator (UPS) or simply an extension cord. So we need a possibility to plug it into the grid (1-phase might be too low, but let's go for that first as the vacuum system needs by far less energy in a mobile robot than in a conventional one). For regenerative purposes a 100 kW inverter is planned and is waiting to be tested (once I have the equipment). The last autumn prototype was a failure in too many aspects (rigidity, linear gliders of robotic manipulators) so that design was adapted in the meantime and is waiting for me finishing several blender addons. [2]

Discussion

Feel free to post critiques or technical stuff here - alternatively use the forum or use the "talk" page. --Jan

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Open Source Ecology Germany - Forum: Thread AMOR