Robots get to feel up cows.
Saturday, October 14th, 2006Little known fact: I grew up near a dairy farm. I’ve milked a cow or two. It’s not exactly fun, but it isn’t dreadful either.
Robots are now doing the dirty work on a farm in Pennsylvania, where 10 robots milk 500 cows, who voluntarily walk into the robo-milkers to dump their udders (humans don’t hook up the standard milker. This is 100% automated.)
[The system] reduced the farm’s labor costs by 75% and raised milk production by 15%, says Waybright, president of the farm. He plans to buy 30 more robots to milk the rest of the herd. “Robots don’t get sick, need health insurance, have birthdays, get drunk, and they always show up,” Waybright says.
When a cow enters the milking stall, the robot “recognizes” the cow by a transponder in her collar. Data about the cow, including the last time she was milked and her expected yield, is uploaded to the robot’s Linux-based interface from a database running on a Windows PC. The DeLaval VMS uses a hydraulic arm, two lasers, and an imaging-processing system to detect the cow’s teats, which are sanitized before milking. When done, the equipment automatically detaches. Cows are enticed with a protein snack. “Cows pick up their own rhythm. They’re habit-forming animals and typically adjust to the new process easily,” says Tony Brazda, a DeLaval VMS solutions manager.
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This is clearly a big win for anyone who’s ever had to get up at four-effing-thirty in the morning to milk cows. So listen up, you silicon lotharios: You robots can grab as many bovine mammaries as you want. But the homo-sapien mamaries are strictly for us homo-sapiens. You touch even one of the boobies I’ve targeted for squeezeling, and your batteries go bye-bye. Got it?
