Keywords

21.1 Introduction

Poultry farming is a growing sector within the agriculture domain in our country. It is usually classified into organized and unorganized industrial sector. The requirements of organized and unorganized sectors are different. The organized sub-sector follows all the rules tested by various corporations throughout their productions. Poultry farming is principally divided into two kinds of business models, viz broiler production and egg production. More than 80% of boiler production output is produced in the organized sector [1]. The various methods are used in broiler production to keep birds in the poultry farming like intensive and unconfined poultry, layer poultry, organic, yarding methods, etc. Usually, intensive poultry farming is used for a larger variety of poultry birds with high stocking density [2]. According to the Worldwatch Institute, “Around 74% of total poultry meat and 68% of total poultry eggs area unit created from intensive poultry farming method” [2]. This method is economical considering factors such as land, feed, labor, and alternative resources and increases the production. In India, the poultry farming business is fully controlled by the farmer. It ensures continuous production throughout the year. However, some disadvantages of this method are generating health risks and environmental threats.

The characterization of wastes and their main elements such as ways of disposals, water quality impact, chemical and microbiological dynamics, etc. [3]. Characterization of wastes is principally because of three factors viz. poultry litter, poultry manure, and dead birds. Poultry litter refers to the material utilized by the poultry for bedding throughout the assembly cycle. The litter material is typically wood, packing, wheat straw, peanut hulls, or rice hulls. Generally, during the broiler production, the accumulating manure is mixed with the litter. The production of litter is influenced by age and breed of chickens, the density of confinement, feed conversion rate, feed volume, type and amount of litter, wet content of litter, floor surface, weather conditions during litter accumulation, and organic matter.

There is a huge amount of various gases trapped inside poultry litter and manure like carbon (C), ammonia (NH3), nitrate (NO3), chlorine (Cl), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), etc. The compositions of various gases in poultry litter and poultry manure are given in Tables 21.1 and 21.2.

Table 21.1 Composition of gases in poultry litter (g in kg of litter) [3]
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Table 21.2 Composition of gases in poultry manure (g in kg of manure) [3]
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The main reason of bad odor spread in the poultry and its surrounding is due to the trapped gases [4]. The magnitude of the environmental impact of poultry farming depends on production practices, particularly on manure management practices. The lack of awareness and the capital cost are two factors that affect the implementation of manure management practices [5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24].

The manure management practices are implemented through the collection of poultry litter (once a week in the dry season and twice in a week in the rainy season) and stored in the bags or dumped in the separate compartment. The collection of poultry litter is difficult in intensive and free-range poultry farming methods because birds roam over entire shed area. Therefore, the poultry farmer tries to dry the mixture of poultry manure and poultry litter on the floor by frequent scrubbing and making the litter upside down manually with local tools. It leads to contact between poultry birds and human, and diseases may spread from human to the birds. In this paper, a design of robot is proposed to address the above problem. The objectives are to design a robot so as to free out trapped gases in poultry litter and manure and to increase movement of birds. The robot scrubs the floor and make the litter upside down for quick dry. In addition, it prevents human–birds contact.

21.2 Methodology

The concept generation is an important stage for designing a new product. As per the poultry farmers’ requirement, there is a need of automatic device (or robot) which performs the routine work such as scrubbing the floor and make the litter upside down. To define the specification of robot, the information on the nature of the shed, the density of birds in a shed, the path of a robot, a general obstacle in the path of a robot, etc., are collected.

The shed is a place where the birds are kept. The dimensions of a shed are helpful to decide a path of the robot during its operation. In addition, the information on the roughness of a floor helps to decide the traction of the wheels of a robot. The extra care on the change of floor surface characteristics due to poultry litter is considered. Traction is an important factor in the selection of wheel and type of drive given to wheel. There are four major types of robot wheel available such as standard, caster ball, Mecanum, and Omni wheel. In this work, a 6-inch standard wheel was selected (see Fig. 21.1b).

Fig. 21.1
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Actual components a Motor. b Front wheels

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The wheels are driven by means of a motor. The selection of motor speed and torque is obtained as follows,

$$ {\text{Rotational}}\,{\text{speed}} \, \left( {{\text{RPM}}} \right) = \frac{{\text{Robot, speed}}}{{{\text{wheel}}\,{\text{circumference}}}} $$
$$ {\text{Torque}} = \frac{{{\text{Mass}}\,{\text{of}}\,{\text{robot}} \times {\text{Accel}}.\,{\text{due}}\,{\text{to}}\,{\text{gravity}} \times {\text{Radius}}\,{\text{of}}\,{\text{wheel}} \times {\text{Coefficient}}\,{\text{of}}\,{\text{firction}}}}{{{\text{Number}}\,{\text{of}}\,{\text{wheel}}\,{\text{to}}\,{\text{be}}\,{\text{drive}}}} $$

In the above relation, the robot speed is fixed on the value of the maximum and minimum speed of the bird. The obtained motor speed and torque are 100 rpm and 5 Nm, respectively. However, the motor with 8Nm torque is selected considering safety factor and the market availability (see Fig. 21.1a).

A tool is designed to scrub the floor and to make the litter on the floor upside down. A shaft with curved blade arrangement is proposed as shown in Fig. 21.2. A shaft is driven by separate motor with sufficient torque to perform the task. The spacing between two blades and the geometry of curved blades is finalized based on initial prototypes.

Fig. 21.2
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CAD model of tool

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To design an automatic robot, various electronic components such as microcontroller, distance sensor (ultrasonic sensor), servo motor, and motor controller are required. The microcontroller used in a present robot is Arduino UNO with ATmega328P microcontroller chip. It has 5 V operating voltage, 32 KB flash memory, and 14 digital pins out of which 6 pins provides pulse width modulation (PWM) output, 16 MHz frequency and 7 to 12 V input voltage, and 6 analog input pins (see Fig. 21.3a). Distance sensor is used to measure the distance of the robot from the wall of a shed. It is an ultrasonic sensor (HC-SR04 module) with specification, viz 5 V (DC) voltage, 15 mA operating current, and 40 Hz frequency. It measures distance in the range of 0.02–4 m (see Fig. 21.3b). The servo motor is used for rotating an ultrasonic sensor through 90° when the measured distance is less than the turning radius of a robot. It has a specification of 0.1765 Nm stall torque, 0.1 s/60° operating speed, 5 V operating voltage, and the mass 9 g (see Fig. 21.3c). The motor controller is used for connecting a microcontroller and the motor (see Fig. 21.3d).

Fig. 21.3
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Electronic components a Arduino UNO. b Ultrasonic sensor. c Servo motor. d Motor controller

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A program in Arduino IDE software is written (see Fig. 21.4a). The above components are wired and interfaced with personal computer for testing. A detail flowchart is shown in Fig. 21.4b.

Fig. 21.4
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a A program in Arduino IDE software. b A detailed flowchart of a program

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21.3 Result and Discussion

After following the methodology given in Sect. 21.2, an automatic robot is designed and developed. The dimensions of the robot are 400 × 350 × 200 (L × B × H) mm3. A 3D CAD model of the automatic robot is developed in CATIA -V5 software. The rendered image of the robot is shown in Fig. 21.5.

Fig. 21.5
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Isometric view of automatic robot

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The program in the microcontroller (Arduino UNO) allows the user to enter floor area. The robot automatically maneuvers on the floor area.

The robot moves in forward direction by means of DC motor and ultrasonic sensor continuously measures the distance of robot from boundary of poultry farm. When it reaches below the turning radius of robot, then it will stop at that point. Then, servo motor turns 90 degree in clockwise direction. Ultrasonic sensor above servo motor decides distance between wall and robot. If distance is above turning radius, then robot can take U-turn in clockwise direction and if not, it takes anticlockwise U-turn. After completion of U-turn, it moves in forward direction. Robot repeats the above steps to cover the whole farm area.

The tool attached to the robot constantly rotates and scrubs the floor. It makes the litter on the floor upside down. Therefore, the trapped gases come out and reduces the dry time and the odor. According to the study, 6–7 days are required to dry a bird waste and the other litters on the floor. When the present automatic robot is used in the poultry, the time reduces to 2–3 days.

According to the personal interaction with the local poultry farmers, nearly 45–50 days are required to grow the broiler birds from 300 g to 3 kgs in normal condition. When an automatic robot is used, the movement of the birds on the floor happens frequently. Therefore, the birds consume more grains and gain the required weight within 40–42 days. This helps a farmer to produce 2–3 more batches per year.

The main advantage of the automatic robot is that it reduces the human interaction with the birds and resulting diseases. Due to the removal of trapped gases from the bird waste and the other litters on the floor, the spread of the bird diseases is significantly reduced.

21.4 Conclusions

The poultry farming is a growing segment in the agriculture domain in India. The environmental impact due to poultry farming especially air pollution is high near to a poultry farm. The manual tool to make wastes upside down is a conventional method that can consume more time and leads to the spread of diseases from humans to poultry birds. To overcome these issues, an automatic robot is designed for the poultry farms. The automatic robot is found to be more effective in improving the air quality, the birds welfare, and production rate.