ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,564,172, issued on March 3, was assigned to LELY PATENT N.V. (Maassluis, Netherlands).
"Milking device for milking a dairy animal" was invented by Akhil Piplani (Maassluis, Netherlands) and Maarten Vincent Kea (Maassluis, Netherlands).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A milking device for milking of a dairy animal with teats includes a control unit, a milking device including milking cups, a robot arm to attach the milking cups to the teats of the dairy animal, a teat-detecting device to determine positions of the teats, including an outer optically permeable component, such as a lens or cover plate, and a cleaning device to clean the optica...