A Literature Review of Modeling Approaches Applied to Data Collected in Automatic Milking Systems

Simple Summary Automatic milking systems (AMSs) are revolutionizing dairy farming worldwide. Not only do they control the milking process, but they also bring changes to the whole farm system management. In this review, the examination focused on the study of AMSs using various modeling approaches. Our review primarily encompassed published articles addressing cows' health, production, and behavior/management. Within this field, Machine Learning (ML) emerged as the prevailing modeling approach. Most of the studies were aimed at detecting cows' health problems, especially mastitis. However, there is still a lack of a robust methodology for utilizing ML techniques in this domain, and it was also observed that the number of positive and negative cases is often unequal, leading to populations that are not balanced when predicting health issues. Only a small number of studies focused on milk production, even though accurate forecasting of individual cow milk yields could be very useful. Additionally, the study of cow behavior and herd management using AMSs is still not very explored. Automatic milking systems (AMS) have played a pioneering role in the advancement of Precision Livestock Farming, revolutionizing the dairy farming industry on a global scale. This review specifically targets papers that focus on the use of modeling approaches within the context of AMS. We conducted a thorough review of 60 articles that specifically address the topics of cows' health, production, and behavior/management Machine Learning (ML) emerged as the most widely used method, being present in 63% of the studies, followed by statistical analysis (14%), fuzzy algorithms (9%), deterministic models (7%), and detection algorithms (7%). A significant majority of the reviewed studies (82%) primarily focused on the detection of cows' health, with a specific emphasis on mastitis, while only 11% evaluated milk production. Accurate forecasting of dairy cow milk yield and understanding the deviation between expected and observed milk yields of individual cows can offer significant benefits in dairy cow management. Likewise, the study of cows' behavior and herd management in AMSs is under-explored (7%). Despite the growing utilization of machine learning (ML) techniques in the field of dairy cow management, there remains a lack of a robust methodology for their application. Specifically, we found a substantial disparity in adequately balancing the positive and negative classes within health prediction models.