Robots Could Soon Milk Cows on Existing Farms

Milking cows twice a day is hard, repetitive work that ties farmers to the barn. Tom, who grew up on a dairy farm in Ireland and now lives in Sydney, wants to change that with a robot called Moobotics. Unlike current robotic milking systems that require building a whole new barn, his robot is designed to work in existing milking parlours—the rows of stalls where cows are milked. It would travel along the pit, pick up the milking cups, and attach them to each cow automatically.

The technical challenge is tricky: cows move, and teats aren't always in the same spot. Tom is using 3D cameras to spot teats in real time and a robotic arm with force feedback (like a gentle touch) to guide the cups on safely. He's in the early prototyping stage, testing depth cameras, six-axis arms, and artificial udders. He's also learning about compliant control—tech that lets robots interact softly with living animals.

Tom has deep dairy knowledge but is new to robotics. He's looking for a technical co-founder or collaborators, especially those skilled in computer vision, robot manipulation, or ROS 2 (a common robot software). He's even considered a $10,000 university robotics challenge to spark interest. He's not asking for free work—he wants to learn, contribute, and build something that helps farmers.

Robotic milking already exists (Lely in Europe, Pharm in the US), but retrofitting old parlours is a huge untapped market. If successful, Moobotics could save farmers hours of labour daily, improve cow welfare, and make dairy farming more sustainable. Tom's journey shows how AI and robotics are moving from factories into fields—and that the next big innovation might come from someone who knows the problem firsthand.