Kuhn’s autonomous Aura mixer feeder project no longer requires a driver … not even for filling the tub. But there is one little catch…
While milking robots are now much more commonplace, autonomous feeding systems are less popular, which seems somewhat irrational when little and often feeding is known to increase intakes, not to mention the time and fuel savings.
One aspect that has hindered uptake is that all the automated feeding systems currently on the market use a bunker or feed kitchen for the forage. One notable exception was the Schuitemaker Innovado (see profi 4/2017), which has since been shelved.
Enter Kuhn with its Aura robot feeder. The autonomous feeding system for up to 280 cows plus followers was first shown in 2021. It can travel to the silage clamp, where the 50cm wide milling head will start to load into the twin-auger, 3.0m3 capacity hopper. Once loaded and mixed (the latter is time controlled), the 6.92m long, 2.60m tall machine makes its way to the cow shed where the feed ration is distributed via a cross conveyor at the rear of the machine, allowing it to discharge right up to a dead-end passageway.
Rotating brushes push the feed closer to the feed fence, and the Aura can also use these brushes to sweep the feed back to the cows as a separate pass. One small downside of the brushes is plastic contamination of the feed from any bristles that work their way loose.
Measure yard
Kuhn says the 5.8t robot can travel with an accuracy of 2cm. To achieve this, it relies on a combination of a permanent Wi-Fi connection to the server and two GNSS antennas, with a GPS RTK signal (subscription-free) taking over navigation in the open yard. If the GPS signal is lost in the cow shed, the Aura uses sensors on the four solid rubber forklift wheels to determine the unit’s position using odometry (distance measurement).
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