THE DEVELOPMENT OF A PNEUMATIC ROBOT FOR ATTACHING A MILKING MACHINE TO A COW

A pneumatic robot for attaching the teatcups of a milking machine to a cow has been developed. This is the first task for which a robot has been used to track and make intimate contact with a live, loosely cons trained animal. The system uses three sources of information relating to the position of the cow's teats; stored teat positions, positions i nferred from body position sensors, and teatcup position errors genera ted by a local sensor above the teatcup. A model of the robot has been developed and used to predict the effects of changes to the teat loca tion system and the dynamic response of the robot. The results show th at it should be possible to improve the performance of the robot by ta king into account the dynamic relationship between the movement of the body of the cow and of its teats, and by the use of a single accurate direct measurement of teat position at the start of the attachment pr ocess. Further development work and extensive field trials are require d to validate these predictions.