Patent ID: 8794182

Claim:
A system for controlling an automatic milking system, configured for automatically receiving, identifying and selectively milking a lactating animal in accordance with a set of milking parameters associated with said animal, said system comprising: a thermal imaging device, configured for generating at least one current thermal image of at least a portion of an udder of said animal, a storage device, configured for storing at least one reference thermal image of said udder, and a processing device, configured for comparing at least one current value derived from said at least one current thermal image and/or at least one current thermal image with at least one reference value derived from said at least one reference thermal image and/or at least one reference thermal image, wherein the processing device is arranged to detect a temperature difference between the udder as depicted on the current thermal image and the udder as depicted on the reference thermal image, wherein said processing device is arranged to selectively provide a status indication of said animal in response to a result of said detection wherein the processing device is arranged to receive a user input setting or modifying at least one of said milking parameters in response to said status indication, or to selectively set or modify at least one of said milking parameters in response to said status indication; and wherein said set of milking parameters comprise at least one of a milking macro frequency, a milking micro frequency, a milking time, a milking vacuum level, milk handling and milk treatment.