Design and Test of Disinfection Robot for Livestock and Poultry House

Abstract

In order to improve the efficiency and safety of epidemic prevention and disinfection operations for livestock and poultry breeding, the disinfection robot system and the automatic disinfecting mode were researched in this study. The robot system is composed of four components, namely the automatic bearing vehicle, the disinfection spraying unit, the environmental monitoring sensors, and the controller. The robot supports two working modes: fully automatic mode and remote control mode. Aiming at the low-light and low-stress condition in the livestock and poultry houses, the method for detecting navigation path based on "Magnet-RFID" marks in the ground was proposed to realize the robot's automatic moving between the cages. In view of the large-flow and long-range requirements of the disinfectant's spraying, the air-assisted nozzle was designed, which could atomize and disperse the liquid independently. Based on the CFD simulation of airflow in the nozzle, the nozzle's parts structural parameters were optimized, as the angle of the cone-shaped guide pad and the inclination angle of the grid respectively determined as 75°and 90°. Finally, the robot's performance was tested in a poultry house in Beijing. The results showed that, the robot's mobile platform could automatically navigate at the speed of 0.1－0.5 m/s, and the maximal deviation distance between the actual trajectory and the expected path was 50.8 mm. The air-assisted nozzle could realize the atomization and diffusion of the liquid medicine at the same time, and was suitable for spraying the liquid medicine with a flow rate of 200－400 mL/min. The diameter (DV.9) of the liquid droplets formed was 51.82－137.23 μL, and became larger as the flow rate of the liquid medicine increased. The deposition density of spray droplets formed by the nozzle was 116－149/cm2, and decreased as the spray distance increased. The size and density of the liquid droplets of the spray nozzle in different areas of the cage all met the index requirements for effectively killing adherent pathogenic microorganisms. The robot could be applied as an automatic sprayer for disinfectant and immune reagent in the livestock and poultry house.

Keywords

• epidemic prevention
• disinfection spraying
• agricultural robot
• magnet-rfid
• nozzle