Lely has released two new automatic milking solutions and a new tool for on-farm digital resilience.
Both the Astronaut A5 Next and Astronaut Max build on the success of the Astronaut A5 milking robot, while the new Lely Hub is a data safety device for farmers.
Lely says these solutions are designed to meet the evolving needs of modern dairy farming, with a strong focus on improving animal welfare and farmer prosperity.
“Astronaut Max and Astronaut A5 Next are designed to provide farmers with stability in their dairy operations and offer future-proof automatic milking solutions,” Lely CEO André van Troost said.
“Furthermore, with the increase in digital services on the farm, data security is essential. Lely Hub supports our farmers by improving digital safety between Lely solutions and the internet.”
Astronaut A5 Next
The most significant change from the Astronaut A5 to the Astronaut A5 Next is the completely new and future-proof operating system that improves serviceability through remote assistance and over-the-air software updates.
Backward compatibility enables farmers with an A5 to upgrade to certain features of A5 Next.
Secondly, a robot arm that combines precision and vision with laser and camera, offers better visibility of the cow’s teats.
For the Astronaut, the added automatic milk filter automates the last remaining manual and repetitive routine in the milking process.
Finally, to make automatic milking accessible to a larger group of farmers worldwide, cow identification through Eartag ID is now part of our Lely’s health portfolio.
Astronaut Max
Currently, Astronaut Max can connect up to 18 Astronaut milking robots in one control room and is therefore suitable for farms with 500 to 1100 cows.
It supports the robots in all their peripheral needs such as vacuum, compressed air, cleaning water, udder care and milk transport.
Astronaut Max centralises the milking and cleaning processes and storage for cleaning and udder care consumables, the latter contributing to a safe working environment and shortening of labour routines.
Milking and cleaning can be performed independently of each other, which means the milking robots can remain operational even during service and robot cleaning. This significantly increases uptime and milk capacity.
Lely Hub
Over the years, farmers have increasingly automated and digitised processes on their farms, enhancing the wellbeing of their cows and boosting the farm's operations.
When working with Lely solutions such as Astronaut or Vector, various sensors collect data about the cows and the robots.
Lely Hub offers a dedicated device that improves the safety and security of data from Lely robots and Horizon, Lely’s data management platform.
Lely Hub is installed at the farm, serving as a shield between the robots and the farmer's computer or mobile phone, and is managed and monitored by Lely.