Project
Robotics in Livestock Farming Systems
Robots will no longer be fixed to specific places. They will become mobile and work together. This means that robots will operate in environments were humans, animals, plants and other obstacles are also present. Taking care of animal welfare and human safety is an important issue in modern farming systems. Therefore Wageningen Agrofood Robotics will also focus on the robot-human-animal-plant interactions for the wellbeing of animals and humans.
Farmers who want to integrate robotics in their farming system have the option to do that together with family, co-workers, service providers and robots.
When robots operate in the same environment as humans and animals new opportunities arise for cooperation between them and also adding new functionalities to the robots. Observing of e.g. animals directly in the group can give us new insights in animal behaviour.
Join our research
Since this a new field in the robotic research we are setting up new projects on robot-human-animal interactions. Also we will work on design methods to integrate safety, ethics and cooperative behaviour in early stages of product development. For testing we have several facilities on different livestock available. Be the first to benefit from these new research lines and to work on new (livestock) farming systems
Expertise
Wageningen Livestock Research is revitalising their expertise on robotics, being one of the farming strategies of the future. Availability of (skilled) labour to feed the world and preserve nature and environment, need for extra labour comfort and safety in harsh environments, and changing organisational issues of farms in the new flexible, dynamic and responsive production networks are the driving forces. Wageningen Livestock Research will focus on:
- Human-Robot-Animal-Environment interaction and cooperative behaviour
- Farming systems design and integration in farming practices
The related ethical and economic issues can be supported by specialists from Wageningen Economic Research.
- Animal wellfare an health knowledge for dairy, pigs, poultry, fish, goats and sheep
- Reflexive Interactive Design methods
- Data analytics for multi-variate dynamic modelling and big data analyses based on statistical and AI techniques (Early warning, benchmarking)
- Sensing animal specific behaviour of individuals and groups in a variety of farming systems (Monitoring, phenomics)
- Decision support principles for a variety of management decisions to be integrated in farming systems with robots (DSS & SOP’s for feeding, insemination, treatment, cleaning, sorting, replacement)
- Insight in data infrastructures and innovation strategies
- New expertise on robotics in livestock farming systems