National Research Development Corporation

British Technology Group Limited

Arthur Leonard Wilkin

Clive John Allen

John Arthur Marchant

John Alan Benson

Michael John Street

Michael J Street

Toby Trevor Mottram

John A Marchant

John A Benson

Stephen Lindsay Crook

Cleaning of milking animal teats

An arrangement to apply a milking apparatus to the udder of an animal at a milking point including a store for the apparatus, a handling device having an elongate arm to support and move the apparatus between an apparatus acquisition point and the milking point, a stall to define a specific space for an animal to be milked fixedly related to the acquisition point and the milking point, including guides to retain loosely in the space an animal to be milked, sensors to sense retained animal position with respect to the fixedly related space and points and provide a first signal indicative of sensed animal position, pneumatic elements in the device to swing and to longitudinally displace the elongate arm to move and position the elongate arm and any supported apparatus, and control circuitry to control the pneumatic elements to operate the arm to acquire milking apparatus at a position forward of the teats of a retained animal, the control circuitry being responsive to the first signal to move the acquired apparatus rearwardly under the animal to the milking point for application to a respective teat of a retained animal, the arrangement further including in association with the acquired apparatus localized teat sensors to provide a second signal indicative of sensed teat position relative to the acquired apparatus, the control circuitry being responsive also to the second signal to control the pneumatic elements for application of the acquired apparatus to a respective teat, the movement of the arm by the response of the control circuitry to the second signal being localized with respect to the response to the first signal to enable a teat cup of the apparatus to be applied to a teat.

Automatic milking of animals

Growing community of inventors

Bracknell, United Kingdom

Clive John Allen