PoultryRob

In egg and hatching egg production, “defective eggs” are a major problem: Only eggs laid in designated laying bins may be used; eggs laid on the barn floor must be discarded for hygiene reasons. Until now, farmers have manually conditioned hens after they are placed in the coop to encourage them to lay in the nests—a labor-intensive process that is still not entirely effective. The research project is therefore developing an automated conditioning process. Ceiling-mounted cameras analyze behavior and the risk of eggs being laid on the floor; the data controls the navigation of a mobile robot that independently performs the conditioning in the barn. The robot’s sensors support navigation and enable targeted measures to prevent eggs from being laid on the floor and reduce the reject rate. This enables continuous conditioning and, at the same time, ongoing barn monitoring to detect problems early on. The goal is to reduce manual labor, lower the defective egg rate, and increase the number of usable eggs in both production lines simultaneously.