
Robotic Milkers and an Automated Greenhouse: Inside a High-Tech Small Farm - johnny313
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/13/technology/farm-technology-milkers-robots.html
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jelliclesfarm
Excellent! Exciting times ahead. This is similar to what I envision with
Jellicles small acreage farm bots without the animals(I have no experience
with that).

My design is for 5 acres, serving 100-150 people and one working person and a
suite of small light weight bots and one heavy duty farm bot. Can be fully
automated. Combination of hydroponics and field grown.

So far, everything is technically “possible” except harvesting and soft
fruits(like berries). I can automate(theoretically) everything from greenhouse
operations to field prep to planting to fertilizing to limited harvesting and
packing.

We can do so far: greens, fruits(nightshade), foot crops, brassicas, squashes,
pumpkins and orchard operations. Even some kinds of grains like millets and
barley. With floriculture..so far I have only figured out sunflowers..

Now..Gots to figure out prototyping...

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leroy_masochist
The math for the milking machines seems wacky. Average milking session is
supposedly 6 minutes, which means each robot has a capacity of 10 cows/hour
(not taking into account changeover time which is likely not trivial). There
are 3 robots and a herd of 150 who are milked 4x/day on average. That's 600
total sessions, or 60 machine-hours, so this implies that each machine is
operating at perfect efficiency 20 hours/day.

