Automatic teat treatment method and apparatus for carrying out a pre- or post-treatment operation on the teats of an animal, said method using a pre- or post-treatment robot apparatus (1) with a control system (5), said robot apparatus being capable of carrying a treating device (12) on an arm thereof, said method comprising the steps of: establishing a start time to for said pre- or post- treatment operation, establishing the presence of an animal at a treatment location, and: (i) initiating automatic detection of the spatial teat position of a first one of said teats and (ii) registering the spatial position of said detected teat, and (iii) deriving a dedicated teat-treating action for treating said teat, and (iv) initiating and carrying out the teat-treating action, and (v) repeating said initiating, registering, deriving, and treating steps i-iv once in respect of each successive teat of said animal until all its teats are treated and thereafter retracting the robot arm away from the animal to a retracted position wherein if, after the start time to, a predefined point in time td is passed before any of the preceding steps is completed, the method according to steps i-v is interrupted and a default treating action for treating all remaining untreated teats is derived and carried out by the treatment apparatus and thereafter said robot arm is retracted.La présente invention concerne un procédé et un appareil de traitement automatique de pis pour réaliser une opération pré- ou post-traitement sur les pis dun animal, ledit procédé utilisant un robot pré- ou post-traitement (1) avec un système de commande (5), ledit robot étant capable de porter sur un de ses bras un dispositif de traitement (12), ledit procédé comprenant les étapes suivantes : établissement dun moment de départ t0 pour ladite opération pré- ou post-traitement, établissement de la présence dun animal à un emplacement de traitement, et : (i) initiation de la détection automatique de la position spati
