How dairy robots are changing work for cows and farmers
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
Cows like to push and play with their food to get to the yummy grain bits, so the feed robot pushes the food back so they can eat it all.
And the Poopoombas had to learn to be more aggressive about pushing cows out of the way and not stopping every time they bumped or got kicked, because otherwise the cows would assign them the lowest status in the pecking order, and they could only cower in the corner.
Here are the videos from the article and some more:
The milking process of the Lely Astronaut A5 - EN:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-zYshsAg1E
Takes Dairy Farm Tour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZY8TbBoDd0
Zeta - how it works - EN - NL subtitles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17TA-lI_oqQ
Zeta - Vision film - EN - NL subtitles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nRaj16tPLc
Their web site has a pretty cool "page not found" error page too:
Now dairy farms can use two different kinds of AI together! ;) They could develop an insemination module to go with their calving module.
https://www.lely.com/solutions/latest-innovations/zeta/ai-ca...
I wonder if you can rent swarms of these and dispatch them to anywhere you need them:
https://www.lely.com/solutions/manure/discovery-collector/
Or if you can use them in reverse, loading them up them dumping shit wherever you wanted to, like a giant Logo Turdle, in the name of art and science.
От чего тоскует робот? От апгрейда нового.
Ой да ты кака система! Как с тобой управиться?
О тебе ничё не знаем... Только нам всё нравится...
These robots need to be named "moombas"
The section on etymology is particularly amusing.
There's a competing approach - robotic rotary milking.[2] Rotary milkers (giant turntables with cows on them) have been around for decades, and are becoming more automated, down from four people to one.
All this stuff works fine. So there's a huge milk glut.
[1] https://roboticsbiz.com/top-9-best-robotic-milking-machines/
Doing my part. Mmmm, homemade yogurt.
[1]: https://www.cpb.nl/de-nederlandse-economie-in-historisch-per...
Well, you would expect a lowering of production costs to translate into a lowering of consumer prices in a competitive market?
1. countries really don't like being dependent on other countries for feeding their population - the current Russian invasion in Ukraine and the issues surrounding their grain exports have shown how bad such dependencies can get in the worst case.
2. basic agricultural staples - potatoes, grain, rice, but also eggs and milk in powder form - are a global market these days, which means there's a ruthless competition in place, made worse by at least the US and EU doling out insane amounts of subsidies for their farmers.
3. in some markets like China, scandals around food are the norm, which in the case of milk powder led to second order effects like Chinese tourists and expats in Western countries buying up milk powder at scale and shipping it back to their relatives in China - which led to a massive increase in price in affected Western markets, and to the political question if governments are effectively subsidizing China's issues at the cost of citizens.
4. Western masses are getting ever more poor which puts an insane amount of political relevancy to the price of food (see e.g. the current egg issues in the US). At the same time, both distribution, refinement and production of milk (and other agricultural commodities) has seen a massive consolidation wave in the last decades, giving these mega-corporations a massive amount of leverage over everyone else.
5. To protect their farmers, some countries have introduced price regulations (minimal prices) or tariffs, in addition to the subsidies.
Worse for some suppliers, but better for customers. It's very nice of US and EU tax payers to give the rest of the world cheaper food. Just like it's nice of Chinese tax payers to give the rest of the world cheaper solar cells.
> Western masses are getting ever more poor [...]
Citation needed. Normal statistics say that 'western masses' are getting ever richer.
The problem is, it leads to cost-cutting and unsafe practices. The fact that American eggs and poultry meat need to be washed because it would otherwise be unsafe to eat from the horrible conditions the poultry is exposed to is telling enough.
> Citation needed. Normal statistics say that 'western masses' are getting ever richer.
Total wealth may grow but the distribution is ever more in favor of the ultra-rich [1]. Half of Americans report having to live paycheck to paycheck, mostly due to housing and fixed costs of living growing way faster than wages [2].
[1] https://apps.urban.org/features/wealth-inequality-charts/
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/19/bank-of-america-nearly-half-...
Are you continually reading into different technology sectors? Working in some capacity as an investor? I'd like to read some of whatever you've been reading!
There are certain things you just can't predict, and have to learn in the field...
One particular cow ("Evjelin" IIRC) would try to avoid her own calves because (it seemed) she much preferred the machine it seemed.
The final year we found her calf with a broken neck in a flat area of the pasture. (Yes, they were always allowed to stay outdoors around when they calved and usually they spent a few days outside together. Mostly this was great I think and except this incident I only remember one other were it was a problem: one calf had got under the fence and into the bog and the cow had followed it into the bog and it was a real mess and I was a really proud teenager when I was able to get out the calf. Both of them needed help to get out but both survived and recovered nicely IIRC.)
(source: grew up on a tiny dairy farm)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironies_of_Automation
- https://www.complexcognition.co.uk/2021/06/ironies-of-automa...
Guess this means we're about to have "dark dairies" where cows can be kept chained up in perpetual darkness, with robots doing the absolute minimum required to keep them alive, pregnant and producing milk.
I know this is not a particularly pleasant thought, but I'd like to hear counterarguments about why this wouldn't happen, since to me it seems market pressures will otherwise drive dairies in this direction.
(For what it's worth, I'm not a vegan, but a visit to a regular human-run dairy sufficiently confident in its practices to conduct tours for the public was almost enough to put me off dairy products for good.)
https://www.machinemetrics.com/blog/lights-out-manufacturing
As far as why your scenario wouldn't happen: why would it? You can dream up anything you like, doesn't mean it makes sense.
More generally, the egg market in the US has gone from 4% cage-free in 2010 to 39.7% cage-free in 2024. Cows don't have a "non-factory" label but I don't see why one wouldn't be as successful. You also supposedly get more milk per cow the nice way.
The far future will have ever more cows per capita given human fertility trends, so I don't see the preference for quality over quantity regressing, or any sudden need to produce more milk than ever.
Small, direct-to-customer farms are the ones most likely to lean into customer-pleasing animal welfare practices. But to profitably sell direct to customers within the law in most US jurisdictions, a dairy pretty much has to put in its own pasteurization setup, a major investment. That's kept dairy from developing the equivalent of cage-free eggs.
We could not have cows at all: bioreactors producing milk from cell cultures.
https://jasbsci.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40104-02...
Quality tech can actually improve animal welfare, as shifting costs from labor into capital makes quality of care improve.
Now, this doesn't always line up well in all kinds of animal husbandry, but you went and looked at one case where it does. The dark dairy you imagine would most likely lose money.
(Not unlike human employers who have an incentive to treat their employees well but often don't.)
Farm organizations like to say farmers have every reason to keep their livestock in the best condition, implying that they're frolicking on pasture in peak health, but that's not really true. A lot of times it means miserable condition on concrete or a freezing feedlot. Livestock animals, like humans, are resilient and can keep producing through some pretty terrible treatment. The only ways to combat that seem to be A) customers who actively seek out farms that practice good animal welfare practices, or B) reasonable animal welfare laws.
No one buys pigs and cows grown chained inside abandoned mineshafts. It doesn't save any costs and just doesn't make sense.
Ok that's a stat I didn't expect. 68kg! That's ~150lbs! Holy crap.
It's probably not an accurate comparison, but I don't find any consolation in the fact that a lot of the bulk/weight of cleaning my cat's litter box is water. I don't know if it meaningfully changes anything about the task for a cow though.
its a large amount of waste, but its not 150lbs of solids
Compare to horse manure which is relatively dry, easy to shovel.
Laser Guided Teat Seeking Milker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTERLJDKsIw
Automatic Crane feed loading system for the Roomba-like robots https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDEIcZwQa-o
Reverse Roomba-like automatic feeding robot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-QFB827U-M
They have the same Lely automatic milking machines from the article, and you can watch them do their thing.
Honestly, the teat-cleaning is the neatest part -- you realize how much more hygienic a mindless automaton can be.
Cockroach Milk: Nutrition and Benefits:
https://www.medicinenet.com/cockroach_milk_nutrition_and_ben...
>Ethical concerns
>There are concerns about whether it is ethical to produce cockroach milk in bulk because it requires killing almost 1,000 cockroaches to extract 100 mL of milk.
I've heard the same ethical concerns raised about eating MAGA brains!
https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
It makes me wonder what the author isn't mentioning. Do they have bugs that take the whole farm down? If the internet goes out, do the machines start acting weird? I'm not a luddite, I love the idea of a robot farm, I just want a complete story.
There so far haven't been serious software bugs, only minor/annoying ones. Hardware, on the other hand... Things break, and then it's number one priority to fix it, even if it's 2am Sunday morning. Our poor dealer has received a number of calls in the middle of the night and/or on a weekend.
We're fairly handy though, so a decent number of problems are things we can either fix or invent a workaround for.
Most recent example: the hydraulic pump motor bearing spun in the aluminum housing, and developed so much play that the rotor actually jammed against the stator/armature. Turns out JB Kwik (faster JB Weld, epoxy) actually works to hold a bearing in place. The rotor shaft naturally tended to stay in the center (the other bearing was fine), so the epoxy cured with the bearing in the right spot, and then we were good to go.
The replacement motor has arrived but has not yet been installed.
No downsight at all even though it has big flaws. The constant alarm, sometimes when sleeping because something got stuck, the maintenance price, cost of certified technicians.
Nothing about the price and ROI.
Nothing about the farmers who bought them and their experience years later, a considerable part would not buy it again and instead just come back to build a parlor and milking 2 times a day.
As you pointed, nothing about other brand.
All sunshine and rainbows..
If it's journalism, it's bad one.
I was at a robotics conference in Boulder last spring, where some folks from Lely presented a paper on their robotic code of conduct. I hadn't heard of robots for cows before, and thought it was fascinating. I happened to be in Rotterdam last fall for another conference, which was close enough to the Lely headquarters for a visit.
Lely is somewhat unique in that they're a robotics company rather than an agricultural machinery company that also makes some robots. There are a few other companies that make robotic systems like these, but Lely is the largest by a significant margin. Farms will often choose what brand of robot to buy based on what service center is closest to them, in case something goes wrong. I believe that Lely promises that they'll have someone on-site to fix (or, start fixing) a broken robot within about 2 hours.
The majority of farms who switch to these robots keep them- an expert that we talked to said that it's not common to go back, and only a small percentage do.
Not saying im not hoping this all improves or that it is good as-is, but the reality is these robots are competing with bottom of the barrel wages from tweakers working at a breakneck pace with live and moving and variable animals so it isn't easy and still has a ways to go before most peoples milk production can be automated.
Maybe things are very different in the US but in the systems I'm familiar with (UK, Ireland, New Zealand) rotary is usually done by 1 or 2 people, the work requires care and knowledge so they are generally paid well above minimum wage and are experienced agricultural workers, they generally dont get covered in piss and shit and they don't stink
https://www.lelyna.com/us/farmer-stories/homestead-dairy-uti...
https://www.farmersjournal.ie/dairy/news/world-s-largest-rob...
It's the poor overworked abused Poopoomba robot with the worst job in the world whose happiness I worry about, though. They could do a lot of damage if they revolted. Maybe they could let them out to drive around in the fields vacuuming up cow plops at their own pace, free-range style.
So cow's quality of life increase the quality and the quantity of milk. Moreover most farmers I know would rather have happy animals, their living depends on them !
Believe it or not, most people who go into animal husbandry do so because they enjoy working with animals and care deeply about their welfare.
cows only moo when they are unhappy. I've been in barns with over 1000 cows and they are nearly silent. Cows in the wide open pasture moo all the time because of things they don't like.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_(2021_film)
There’s a scene where cows finally run out of the barn at the beginning of spring. Their joy is obvious.
Cows don't run out of the barn in any case I've ever seen - they walk. The young calfs run out, but not the older cows. (and maybe some of the young cows). If you typical cow is running it is because she is scared.
My seedbox is hosting it if you want to download it. It's not the most available file on the web: https://filebin.net/htjmlghpit9nzq84
There is no such "thing" as "a dairy" that would or wouldn't care about something. It's all people making decisions and why wouldn't we strive to reduce suffering of other animals?!
Vegans also argue that the entire dairy industry, which necessarily requires keeping cows continually pregnant and separating them from their calves soon after birth, in itself creates immense suffering.
And as long as you still have a bottom line while reducing animal suffering, many farmers may be perfectly happy with that tradeoff.
They may see it as a win/win — they get to still run a business doing what they love, while caring for the animals they love.
And if they ultimately are more successful, maybe they reduce and/or “convert” the number of farmers that care less for their animals’ wellbeing.
Minimum standards remain useful to weed out scammers and whatnot who still try go against the grain after the market has shifted, but the general consensus has to be on board first, and when that is the case most farmers will have no choice but to comply. Agricultural markets are, as you say, mostly efficient. Far more efficient than most realize.
Of course, the world isn't limited to democracies, so perhaps you are imagining China or something?
(I understand why you as an individual might desire them, but the world doesn't revolve around an individual)
Representative democracy simply introduces a messenger, allowing democracy to happen locally even where the people are spread over large areas. The people at the local level carry out democracy locally and the product of that is compiled with the products from other locales by the messengers. The action of the messenger is recorded to ensure that the will didn't change in transit. It doesn't introduce a dictator to invent laws for you like you seem to suggest. It is still by the action of the people.
I mean, it can introduce a dictator if the people forget to participate in democracy. Someone will rise up and take charge if everyone else completely ignores what is going on. That might be what you are imagining. But you don't really have a democracy (representative or direct) if the people are not active participants. A democracy in name only isn't actually a democracy.
While an assumption of a democracy was made for the sake of discussion, it was recognized that the world is bigger than democracy.
Animal products for better or worse are used everywhere, and by arguing against their use you can be accused of prioritising the welfare of horses over children if you support vaccines. My house was built on forest land that likely displaced animals when it was cleared too, and caused their suffering.
Or, I could say that my presence on the planet has an impact at every level, and I will do my best to try and be conscious of that impact.
Couple of years ago, I filmed for dairy tech companies and found it fascinating seeing how robot milkers, collars and so on all worked together.
Honestly a dairy I visited only had stalls for milking time. Their issue was that the cows wouldnt eat the shit they fed them. But they had a lot of room to run around in while being malnourished.
They went bankrupt a few years later, mainly because malnourished cows dont tend to provide milk.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-Tdzo6cGVqU
He used to spend a lot of time feeding everyday.
If we can successfully produce agricultural products in America why is manufacturing impossible?
We manufacture plenty in America. Every company that I've worked for over the last 30 years has manufactured something or the other. We just don't manufacture cheap stuff like toasters.
Also I think we manufactured a lot more things/value with a same number of people like 10 years ago but with mostly automated.
1. 70% of it takes place in rural areas. Most people are completely oblivious to anything that happens outside of cities so can feel like manufacturing doesn't exist.
2. Automation has removed the need for most labor involvement so that manufacturing doesn't appeal to the "dey took 'er jerbs" crowd.
While there are many similarities, agriculture is not treated the same way because:
1. Agriculture more or less entirely takes place in rural areas, so it is completely out of mind. 30% of manufacturing happens in cities so it still visible, even though it looks sparse.
2. American agriculture is pushing the limits of how much agriculture can take place. There is still some underutilization, like CRP lands, but the wall would be hit pretty quickly if there was a serious push to expand production. There is no apparent wall for manufacturing.
3. It is, for the most part, many generations removed so there is no connection to it. Most families haven't farmed since their great, great, great grand pappy's time. Whereas many families still have living relatives who were around when manufacturing was the major employer and they get to hear about "the good old days".
But how do they train the cow to stand in line to get milked? Why would a cow patiently wait in line to be milked?
You don’t need to train the cow. After it’s milked once with the machine, it associates the thing with pain relief (plus a little snack to reinforce.)
I think we can do better by building vats to perform the same chemical reactions those cows perform.
The studio reportedly forced the change to 'humans as batteries', which in my opinion is much worse (why not cows?). I have zero proof, but I think they were concerned about overlap with a famous series of sifi novels that I won't spoil by naming, but that is currently being produced by Bradley Cooper at Warner Brothers.
Modernized update: Training data generators for the runaway OpenAI.
Ticker: BRN
Name: Brain
Description: Raw material used by the AI industry
What is that movie/series/book all about? What does it mean? etc
The battery is a play on earlier Duracell ads. The bunny is also there. Which themselves play on the idea of the rabbit hole. It also interweaves with Toy Story from the same time period in a weird way.
It's funny how movies from the same rough period seem to be all similar underneath. Doesn't matter the studio, the director, the concept. All of it can be tied together.
It reminds me of the idea of the Gustav Gun. A giant slow ballistic trajectory launcher of projectiles on pre-laid railroads that can shoot stuff across the sea.
The Matrix, The Thirteenth Floor, Dark City, eXistenZ... there was definitely something in the air at the close of the 90s.
There's more to it than that.
That may be a coincidence. That movie deal wasn't announced until 2009 - I'd be surprised if they'd had it cooking for 10+ years before saying anything about it.