A 20-year Analysis of the Evolution of Automatic Milking Systems: Processes, Technologies and Livestock Environment

Over the last 20 years, the dairy industry has implemented new technologies related to automatic milking systems (AMS). AMSs have the potential to maximize milk production and animals’ welfare thanks to voluntary milking access, as well as to increase the resource efficiency and environmental sustainability of dairy farms. In this study we assessed the state of the art of research on AMS through a systematic review of patent trends in the last two decades. Patents from the last 20 years were extracted from the EspaceNet database. Terms appearing in titles and abstracts of a total of 154 patents were processed using a text mining approach, ignoring low-frequency and meaningless words, and including stemming analysis to aggregate variant forms of the same word. Four clusters were identified: Components, Sensors, Process and Animal. The results showed that the highest number of patents was yielded in the early 2000s, thus indicating great interest in AMS in the initial period. The cluster trend pointed out that the focus on the animal and sensing technologies has been constant over time. In recent years, the priority of research has shifted towards process efficiency and components. Detailed analysis of clusters allowed us to appreciate an increasing interest in the animals’ health and body conditions over time (+249% and +391% from 2000 to 2019, respectively). The processes which showed increasing relevance were the ones related to the cleaning of facilities (+291%). The study of new sensing technologies has focused primarily on imaging, allowing researchers to develop new decision models (+348%). The results suggest that AMS patents are moving their attention towards more efficient and sustainable systems. This trend represents an important opportunity for a significant increase in the sustainability of the dairy sector, not only for animals but also for the farmers through the efficient use of the resources, thus enhancing the consumer’s perception of sustainability.