Division of Information Technology, Engineering and the Environment
School of Advanced Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering
School of Advanced Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering
Thesis Abstract
As technology becomes more affordable and ubiquitous, robots have begun to replace humans in various fields where manual labour would be required. More specifically, the area of autonomous mobile robotics has been constantly advancing and today, robotic lawn mowers (Automower) and vacuum cleaners (Roombaetc) are affordable by most. More recent research into the development of fruit and vegetable harvesting robots have also seen some success and come with the promise of increased food production. The key difference between these robots and their previous generations is that these are predominantly able to make decisions regarding navigation, path planning, obstacle avoidance, recharging and pattern classification.
The demand for free range eggs has increased due to their increased nutritive content, reduced toxicity and more humane forms of poultry farming. This creates a need for the development of a robotic poultry farming assistant. The proposed research aims at building an autonomous mobile robot which will monitor the welfare of the chicken in a free range farm with an additional function to collect eggs. The robot will have the ability to prioritise and therefore more frequently inspect areas where the chickens are more likely to lay eggs. The project will aim at developing a prototype capable of planning its trajectory, avoiding obstacles - static and dynamic, identifying eggs, planning paths and returning to recharging stations. As an extended scope, a robotic arm to collect the eggs would be developed, in addition to adding sensors which test the environment for carbon-dioxide, methane, ammonia and other toxic gasses in cases where the chicken are reared in an indoor environment. Additionally, on the image processing front, the robot would also have to identify chickens which do not move in order to remove sick or dead chickens. As a consequence of this research, farmers would be able to see the robot assisting them in their poultry farming activities on a daily basis. This would increase productivity, reduce labour costs and increase the general welfare of the chicken.
