INNOVATIVE MACHINES AND EQUIPMENT WITH INTELLIGENT CONTROL FOR MILK AND BEEF PRODUCTION
In the context of today's transition from the fifth to the sixth wave of innovation, there is an urgent need for further development of rural areas, which feature limited labor, energy and financial resources. These areas require innovative, intelligent milk and beef production technologies, which can significantly reduce the costs and ensure environmental compatibility of production. In previous years, IEEP developed an energy module of 0.6 drawbar category (6 kN) with a set of around 30 machines for mechanisation of technological processes on the farms with up to 400 head of cattle. Currently, a number of foreign companies are designing and producing robotic equipment to eliminate manual labor when performing individual technological operations on cattle farms. For example, Lely (the Netherlands) offers Vector automatic feeding system, Juno automatic feed pusher and Discovery mobile barn cleaner. At present, all conditions are found in Russia for the development of a novel modular-type robotic unit of several modifications for cattle farms of different size. The advantages of such a unit are supposed to be the smaller number of drives for the movement of working machines and the presence of a single positioning system of the unit installed on the energy module combined with local control systems of the working tools. This will simplify the overall design and make it possible to expand the list of technological operations being performed.