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Assessment of animal status, housing conditions and manually collecting floor eggs are the major daily tasks for poultry farmers. To assist the farmer in these tasks, PoultryBot, an autonomous mobile robot for use in poultry houses has been developed. In earlier research, several components of PoultryBot were discussed in detail. Here, performance of the robot is evaluated under practical conditions. For navigation, different paths were used to assess its navigation performance for various tasks, such as area sweeping and surveying close to walls. PoultryBot proved capable of navigating autonomously more than 3000 m, while avoiding obstacles and dealing with the hens present. The robustness of its navigation performance was tested by confronting PoultryBot with obstacles in different positions with respect to its path and using different settings of the navigation parameters. Both factors clearly influenced the driving behaviour of PoultryBot. For floor egg collection, detection and collection of eggs was assessed at 5 predefined egg positions lateral to the path of the robot. Over 300 eggs were tested; 46% were collected successfully, 37% was not collected successfully, and 16% were missed. The most observed failures occurred when the collection device was just next to the egg. It is thought that this problem can be solved by improving the control algorithm. The results demonstrate the validity of the PoultryBot concept and the possibility of autonomous floor egg collection in commercial poultry houses. Furthermore, they indicate that application of smart autonomous vehicles in dense animal environments is feasible. Highlights • Integration of previous work on PoultryBot, tested in environment with live hens. • Performance evaluation for autonomous navigation and floor egg collection. • Capable of dealing with obstacles and animals using different path types. • Floor egg collection with 46% success, 37% failure and 16% missed from >300 eggs. • Results show that smart autonomous vehicles can be used in poultry houses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ammonia emission from dairy barns can be reduced by measures that improve removal of urine from floors. Information characterizing physical and chemical properties of urine puddles on floors are essential to improve mitigation measures, however information representative for practical barn conditions is scanty. The objective of this paper is to assess the area ( A p ) and depth ( D p ) of fresh urine puddles in commercial dairy barns, and to investigate the effect of floor type, season and manure scraping on these variables. Sixteen farms were measured in a factorial design of four Floor-Management types ( FMTypes ). Each farm was measured in two seasons and underwent an intense-floor-cleaning treatment ( PREclean ) before puddle creation for the D p measurement, which was compared with those created under normal floor conditions with on-farm manure scraping. Overall mean values were 0.83 m 2 for A p and 1.0 mm for D p . For both A p and D p the variation within a farm was large but negligible between farms. FMType significantly affected both variables. The V-shaped asphalt floor resulted in larger A p (1.04 m 2 ) and D p (1.5 mm) than those of slatted and grooved floors (mean values 0.76 m 2 , 0.93 mm). Our study demonstrates that the draining capacity of solid floors is a critical design issue in lowering ammonia emission. The PREclean treatment resulted in D p values that were 3 times lower than values for puddles created under normal floor conditions. We conclude that there is a considerable potential to improve draining of excreted puddles by increasing the cleaning performance of manure scrapers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]