Design and control of a robotic system for application of milking cups

摘要

A robotic system is developed capable of retrieving milking vacuum cups and placing them at points representing the teats of a cow. The points are identified manually and measured using a stereo vision system. Although the system is still at the laboratory development stage it is capable of manipulating the cups simultaneously and independently and of accessing the teats from between the rear legs of a cow. This sets it apart from the similar systems currently available on the market, most of which have been designed for use in shed-based dairy farming, a farming model not commonly used in larger dairy farming operations. The system has been developed to integrate a stereo vision system, in which the teats are manually identified. This is shown to provide sufficiently accurate measurements to allow the placement of the cups onto the teats. However several techniques are investigated to improve the results of an automated teat identification process (to be developed in future work) including the ability to handle the possible case where a spurious object is misidentified as a teat.