Optimization Internship: Lely Astronaut Pre-treatment Brush Lifespan

The Lely Astronaut milking robot is designed to automatically milk cows in the most optimal way. Before milking, the Lely Astronaut performs pre-treatment brushing to remove excess manure, bedding material, and dirt from the teats and lower udder of the cow. Furthermore, the release of the hormone Oxytocin is upregulated in the cow during pre-treatment brushing, which stimulates the milk flow. Currently the pre-treatment brushes are replaced after a fixed number of milkings, independent of the pre-treatment settings. Lely intends to optimize the Lely Astronaut pre-treatment brush lifespan based on different pre-treatment settings.

The assignment involves:

• Understanding the pre-treatment process and identifying all different setting options for pre-treatment.
• Coming up with an experimental set-up to test the effect of different pre-treatment settings on brush lifespan.
• Defining a method on how to determine the level of deterioration of pre-treatment brushes. At what deterioration level should the pre-treatment brush be replaced?
• Running the experiments, analyze the data and drawing conclusions on the exact optimal lifespan of the pre-treatment brush for each setting.
• Make recommendations after drawing conclusions. Optimizing the pre-treatment brush lifespan after tests.

Research question

• What is the most optimal lifespan of pre-treatment brushes for the different pre-treatment settings of the Lely Astronaut milking robot?

Activities

• Understand the pre-treatment process for the Lely Astronaut milking robots. Visiting a farm to see the pre-treatment process in practice.
• Make an overview of pre-treatment setting options and possible factors influencing brush lifespan.
• Write a test plan on how to test deterioration level for different pre-treatment settings and on how to examine these deterioration levels.
• Start with building an experimental setup to test deterioration level for different pre-treatment settings.
• Run the experiments at the test-setup in the workshop.
• Obtain the results and analyze the data.
• Report the results and determine the optimal brush lifespan for different pre-treatment brush settings.

Deliverables

• Test plan.
• Test setup in workshop.
• Report of findings and recommendations.

Requirements

• You are pursuing a college education (HBO) like agrotechnology or material science.
• You have a practical attitude.
• This internship starts in September and is part-time.