Patent ID: 8387565

Claim:
A parallel rotary milking parlour, comprising: a rotatable platform; neighboring milking stalls arranged side by side circumferentially in a parallel configuration along the platform so that each animal stands in one stall so as to face radially inward towards a center of rotation of the platform, each stall comprising a teat cup magazine and plural teat cups removably located within the magazine; and an automatic system comprising of first and second robot arms and an electronic control system, the control system controlling movement of the two robot arms coordinated with rotary movement of the platform, each robot arm further controlled to automatically attach the teat cups to teats of an animal within the stall, each robot arm located adjacent the platform and comprised of i) first, second, third arm sections connected to one another by elbow joints, ii) a swivel unit fixedly mounted at one location, the first arm section extending from the swivel unit and rotatable about a central axis of the swivel unit, and iii) a teat cup carrying part pivotably connected at an end of the third arm section, the swivel unit of the first robot arm spaced apart from the swivel unit of the second robot arm and positioned so that the first and second robot arms are operable to simultaneously service adjacent stalls, as the platform rotates, with the robot arms moving the teat cups from the magazine into attachment with the teats of the animals in the adjacent stalls, each robot arm being sufficiently extendable from the one location, at any single point in time, to service both a first stall positioned immediately adjacent one of the robot arms and a second stall neighboring the first stall, and each robot arm being sufficiently extendable from the one location to have a working range spanning a width of three milking stalls.