Robots running on ceiling-mounted tracks may someday revolutionize broiler-house management by cutting labor costs and improving operational efficiencies.
The Scout autonomous robot is the first autonomous robot to run on a ceiling track in broiler houses. It was introduced in 2023 by AGCO’s Cumberland equipment brand.
“As this system travels throughout the house, it collects numerous parameters including ammonia, airspeed, temperature and humidity,” explained Tanner Thornton, University of Tennessee-Knoxville research technician.
“Scout also collects health and welfare parameters, including suspicious droppings for early disease detection, mortalities and free usable space calculations,” he added.
Using these data, the system then develops reports for the producer on how the current flock compares to previous flocks and prepares a map of mortalities.
“Because this report could be very important for poultry producers, we wanted to make sure the data Scout reports are accurate,” Thornton said.
He and a team of university researchers designed a study to validate the accuracy of the Scout’s mortality detection and environmental monitoring systems.
Thornton presented the results during the 2024 International Poultry Scientific Forum.
Testing mortality detection
The Scout’s mortality-detection system automatically takes an image of every mortality and uploads it to the Scout’s website. The producer can then validate the mortality that was recorded.
To validate the mortality numbers collected by the Scout, the team used a manual assessor to walk the house twice a week in place of the poultry grower. They used a laser distance measurer to mark the location of mortalities.
The assessor also noted any reason the Scout may not be able to find mortalities, such as being covered by litter or under a feed pan.
The system’s mapping ability produced positive results.
“Based on images from the Scout system, we found the Scout has a 95% positive rate,” Thornton said. “So, the Scout system overall finds dead birds.”
The researchers also examined the location of all mortalities, observing that a significant number occurred along the walls and in between the feed and water lines.
For this reason, the Scout system undercounted overall mortalities.
“Forty-five percent of all mortalities were found between the feed and water lines. Thus, the Scout system undercounted mortalities because it was occluded by feed and water lines when trying to find dead birds,” Thornton said.
Positive environmental tests
The researchers used HOBO data loggers to examine the robot’s ability to measure ammonia, airspeed, temperature and humidity.
“The readings from the Scout sensors strongly agreed with our reference sensors, as evidenced by an R2 value of 0.92 for temperature measurement and 0.90 for relative humidity measurement,” Thornton said.
The accuracy of the Scout temperature was +/-1.5° C and +/-10.6% for the humidity sensors, he added.
“Looking at the advantages of this Scout system, it easily moves throughout the broiler house, maps data, and avoids water and feed lines, heaters and all other equipment.”
“The system is also noninvasive, so it doesn’t cause welfare concerns for birds on the floor,” he concluded.
