Published: 18 Jan 2018 | Last Updated: 18 Jan 2018 09:51:44

Dr Theo Demmers, working with several other organisations, has been awarded a new BBSRC/Innovate UK Grant to work on the following project: "ISCF WAVE 1 AGRI TECH: Robochick: an automonous platform for data-collection in poultry sheds".

Poultry meat birds are bred for high muscle gain but require very careful husbandry. Current poultry monitoring technologies operate at flock level and do not provide high resolution data collection and analytics required by modern efficient poultry producers to improve individual bird health and welfare or make significant performance gains.

RoboChick proposes a multi-functional robotic system capable of collecting data autonomously within a poultry shed to target point-of-need/point-of-care management. This feasibility project is multi-disciplinary, bringing together the animal welfare and ethology expertise of the Royal Veterinary College (RVC), the livestock-oriented engineering expertise of Harper Adams University (HAU), the innovative robotic engineering skills of Ross Robotics (RRL), and commercial poultry management skills of Applied Poultry Ltd (APL). The project will integrate these skills to investigate the feasibility and specify a highly functional robotic system for poultry production monitoring and management.