Welcome to the future .... of cow milking.

"This is what we call the robot room," Hi-Tech Dairy Supply President Chad Scholma says as he tours around MSU's just-opened Kellogg Biological Station -- a high-tech dairy farm located in Hickory Corners, Mich.

And those robots are milking cows -- a technology at the center of the university's new research facility.

How's it work?

"The red lines flashing on the teets, that's reflecting off the teets and back to the machine to where it then knows where the teets are," explains Scholma, as he watches the robots milk an incoming cow.

"And now that the computer knows where the teets are, it attaches the cups to each and can start milking."

The goal of all that? Make life easier on dairy farmers.

"The machines attach the milkers to the cows automatically. It cleans the cows, milks them, treats them, and away they go," Scholma says.

And those robots do much more than simply milk the cows. They measure body weight, milking-per-quarter and milk quality -- all in an effort to increase efficiency, and make the cows happy.

"The cows just wander up on their own, they go through on their own," says Mat Haan, project manager for the Kellogg Biological Station. "It's much lower stress on the animals; there's less handling; there's less manipulation of the cows on our part."

And the cows are loving it. The 120 of them located at the dairy farm are showing up almost three times a day on average to be milked.

As for the concern that the robots could put farm-hands out of work?

"By having robotic-milking technology, it's more flexibility for the farm family. Hopefully it'll keep some small, mid-size, family-run farms in business," Haan says.

Something the cows and farmers both seem to appreciate.