The chicken bone robot prototype I made turned out pretty well, mostly because bones have kind of gone through millions of years of evolution to be as strong and light as possible. Sounds like an ideal limb material. It’s also really nice to work with. Would be nice to do some composites too, for molding and 3D printing etc. from egg shells and feathers (2.3 million tonnes of EU feather waste from slaughterhouses a year) and whatever else.
“Ecce” Robot pics from taken at the “making robots human ” exhibition in Stockholm Dan and I went to. The exhibition was kinda out of date British nationalist techno-utopian propaganda, but whatever, still got some cool hardware inspiration.
Turns out Dan’s grandfather, the chicken sexer, had to determine the sex of day old chicks by feeling something in their cloaca. He had to grow his fingernail in some special way to do so. OG robotic prosthetics.
” For color sexing, we make use of the principle of sex-link crosses. Sex-link crosses (hybrid chicken breeds) involve the crossing of two different breeds of chickens to get offspring that can be sexed at hatch by differences in down color. For example, mating Rhode Island Red males with Rhode Island White females. Their offspring will consist of yellow/white colored day-old male chicks, and brown colored day-old female chicks (as always, exceptions are there). Based on the color of the down, the day-old chicks can easily be sorted by sex.
The most common sex link crosses are the red sex link. Close to half of the global chicken population consists of red sex link chickens. Our common brown breeds (ISA Brown, Shaver Brown, Bovans Brown, Babcock Brown, Hisex Brown, Dekalb Brown and Warren) are all red sex link crossbreds.
Please note: this trait does not breed true and breeding two sex linked commercial chickens (hybrids) will not produce offspring that can be sexed at hatch.
Color sexing female day-old chicks
Female day-old chicks have uniformly brown colored down, or brown with a light stripe in the middle of the back.
The following common exceptions can be found: female day-old chicks that have a broad yellow stripe with brown edging on a somewhat lighter background, or female day-old chicks that have a brown colored head with a lighter body.
Color sexing male day-old chicks
Male day-old chicks are yellow/white or show slight brown stripes.
Exceptions can be found: day-old male chicks that have distinct yellow/light stripes with brown borders, or day-old male chicks that have a dark brown stripe in the middle of their back.
Feather-sexing can only be carried out in chicks resulting from the mating of fast normal-feathering males with delayed-feathering females, while vent sexing can be applied to any chicks. This means that feather-sexing cannot be applied to chicks of the same breed, unless geneticists preserve that breed segregating for both types of feathering and birds are strictly controlled for feathering type.
The preparation of new breeds to produce feather sexable crosses implies considerable previous genetic work which is completely beyond the means of most poultry farmers.”
Figure 1. Feathering types Diagram of the wing of a one-day-old chick in dorsal view: A fast normal-feathering with the primary remiges (1a) longer than the coverlets (2a). B sex-linked delayed feathering with the primary remiges (1a) of the same length than the coverlets (2a). C modified delayed feathering with the primary remiges. (1a) shorter than the coverlets (2a).
What kinds of robots are the agri department working on? We see they’ve done really well at the International Field Robot Event – cool!
Do they have / know about layer chickens whose “female day-old chicks have brown down feathers and the males have yellow down feathers” (https://doi-org.proxy.lnu.se/10.3382/ps/pew282), or similar?
possibility to make a dataset from eggs especially if they are sexing them in some other way?
Neural network training – onsite datacentre? or using AWS or GCP?
“Dual-purpose” chicks?
How are they using robotics and automation in agriculture and what kind of crazy sci-fi stories can we get out of them.
Sustainable use of the male embryos as high-quality protein source: Schaffelaarbos partners with Agri Advanced Technologies GMBH (AAT)
The German company AAT offers a non-invasive in ovo sexing method with respectful treatment of sorted out male embryos. Schaffelaarbos will further process these male embryos into Dried Egg Proteins for the Animal Feed Market.
Sex determination in the egg is ready for high-volume application
“CHEGGY” is the name of the machine that marks a breakthrough in hyperspectral measurement technology. Developed by the German manufacturer AAT, this innovative technology is now ready for high-volume, practical application for brown-laying hens in France, Germany, Belgium, Spain and other European countries.
Hyperspectral measurement technology for sex determination in the egg is ready for practical application
Visbek, 3 August 2020. AAT (part of the EW GROUP), the specialist for the development of special application technologies in animal breeding, announces that its solution for automatic sex determination in the egg is ready for use.
Carrefour – the first retailer to introduce a method for avoiding male chicks to be killed
Carrefour press release: As part of its food transition plan, Carrefour and Loué have entered into a partnership to produce and sell eggs laid by chickens produced using a spectrophotometric in-ovo sexing technique. Consumers will be able to purchase the products from 1 May.
Could fake a bit of robot navigation in editing for these static ones
heh. This rings a bell; did you find it before?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0E_aZ5C0x8
ermagherd:
oof:
Heh
omg if you have the stomach please report all the ‘cars vs chickens’ videos on YouTube, I can’t even click on them to do that holy shit. Hoping they are not what the thumbnail implies :/
Firstly, an apology that I can’t speak Swedish! I hope that’s ok.
My name is Miranda and I am a Master’s student in Sustainable Design at Linnaeus University in Växjö. I am working on a practical research project which aims to decrease cruelty in the mass egg farming industry by using technology to provide humane, cost-effective alternatives for large-scale commercial battery farms.
I found out about your farm from the Reko Ring, and I was wondering if you may be open to me coming to visit to do some research? Your small scale, free-range practices are exactly what we would like to convince big agri-business should be possible in the future.
The research would entail me taking some video footage of the chickens and where they live, seeing how they respond to a small robot prototype, and hopefully, if you have time, asking you some questions about your sustainable chicken farming practices.
I hope that you will be interested in contributing to research in pursuit of a more sustainable future! Please let me know if you have any questions.
All the very best, Miranda Moss.
Dagar Groblad <dagar.groblad@gmail.com>
17 August 2020 at 06:09
To: miranda moss <miranda.and.a.moss@gmail.com>
Hello Miranda,
I think you have sent the e-mail to the wrong person. We are not Ulrika and Tomas, and we do not have chickens. Good luck with your research!
Best Regards
Dagar Groblad[Quoted text hidden]
miranda moss <miranda.and.a.moss@gmail.com>
17 August 2020 at 14:51
To: Dagar Groblad <dagar.groblad@gmail.com>
Hi Dagar Sorry for the mistake! It must have been a strange email to receive! Thanks for letting me know though. All the best,Miranda. [Quoted text hidden]
Dagar Groblad <dagar.groblad@gmail.com>
17 August 2020 at 14:54
To: miranda moss <miranda.and.a.moss@gmail.com>
No problem, and not strange. Happy that people like you exist. Together we build something new to try and make a better world. All the best.Dagar [Quoted text hidden]
miranda moss <miranda.and.a.moss@gmail.com>
18 August 2020 at 09:05
To: Dagar Groblad <dagar.groblad@gmail.com>
Thanks for your kind words and encouragement 🙂 Best of luck for you too, on your journey to making a better world![Quoted text hidden]
