ABB Robots in Dairy: Hand Milking to Robot Palletizing

From hand milking in 1940 to milking robots doing 7,000 pounds a day, and how ABB IRB 660 robots stack milk cartons at Brazil's Piracanjuba dairy plant.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/25/20261 min read

In 1940, a Women's Land Army recruit at the Cannington training centre in Somerset learned to milk the way farmers always had, with a stool, a pail and two hands. Every cow took several minutes, twice a day, and on a farm with forty cows that added up to hours before breakfast.

Black and white photo of a woman in a white cap milking a cow by hand into a pail
Black and white photo of a woman in a white cap milking a cow by hand into a pail

A Women's Land Army member milks a cow by hand at the Cannington training centre, Somerset, 1940. Photo: Ministry of Information / Imperial War Museums via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Milking machines and later rotary parlours sped things up. Cows stepped onto a slowly turning platform, and one person attached the cups as each animal came round. The first commercial milking robots went into Dutch barns in 1992, letting cows walk in when they chose while a laser-guided arm found the teats.

Black and white cows standing in stalls on a circular rotating milking platform
Black and white cows standing in stalls on a circular rotating milking platform

Cows on a rotary milking parlour. Photo: Gunnar Richter / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Those robots now run large herds. In September, Dairy Herd profiled farms pushing toward 7,000 pounds of corrected milk per robot per day, and Putz Dairy in the US averages 7,633. The World Dairy Expo's virtual tours, running September 30 to October 2, include a Texas dairy with 22 DeLaval robotic units.

Red and steel robotic milking box with a cow standing inside and a robot arm underneath
Red and steel robotic milking box with a cow standing inside and a robot arm underneath

A cow in a Lely Astronaut milking robot. Photo: Anoek2012 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

ABB doesn't make milking robots. Its arms work further down the line, where the milk gets packed. At Piracanjuba's plant in Goiás, Brazil, which processes 2.3 million litres a day, about 75 people used to stack cartons by hand. ABB fitted IRB 660 robots with a gripper that picks different box counts without retooling.

Large bright dairy packing hall with robot palletizing cells and stacked pallets of milk cartons
Large bright dairy packing hall with robot palletizing cells and stacked pallets of milk cartons

ABB palletizing robots on the UHT milk lines at Piracanjuba's plant in Goiás, Brazil. Photo: ABB (ABB Robotics magazine 1/14)

The IRB 660 lifts up to 250 kg and reaches 3.15 metres, so full cases of UHT milk are well within its range. At Piracanjuba the robot controller talks to the packaging line directly, with no separate PLC in between. The people who used to lift boxes moved to other work in the plant.

White ABB IRB 660 robot stacking brown and red cardboard cases onto pallets
White ABB IRB 660 robot stacking brown and red cardboard cases onto pallets

An ABB IRB 660 palletizer stacking cases, the same model used at Piracanjuba. Photo: ABB

I think farm and factory automation will start to meet. A collaborative arm like ABB's GoFa, which has sensors in every joint, could plausibly handle calf bottles or milk samples on a smaller dairy. The cows already choose when they get milked, and I'd like to see the packing side get just as flexible.

Woman guiding a white ABB GoFa cobot arm by hand at a workbench
Woman guiding a white ABB GoFa cobot arm by hand at a workbench

ABB's GoFa cobot has sensors in all six joints and can be guided by hand. Photo: ABB

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