Cablebot - the cable mounted poultry welfare monitoring robot

CABLEBOT是庞达斯、哈珀·亚当斯大学以及哈德森和桑德斯合作的项目，目的是使用低成本的电缆安装漫游机器人开发自动化人工智能牲畜监控系统。其目的是改善动物健康、性能和行为监测，提供实时环境控制，改进记录保存，并生成管理信息。它将解决劳动力可获得性减少的关键问题以及改善畜牧业生产系统中动物健康和福利的挑战，方法是提供对畜牧场条件的实时控制和信息，减少工作人员目测监测牲畜行为和进行环境控制调整的需要。虽然计划的最终目的是监察所有类型的禽畜，但初期的重点将会放在肉鸡的饲养上。这项计划将透过行为观察、死鸟定位、视觉重量计算及饮食者和喂食者的行为，改善对密集饲养的肉鸡的管理。这将使用安装在电缆上的机器人摄像头平台上的基于摄像头的算法来执行，因此哈德森和桑德斯已经完成了对家禽环境的24/7全天候监测。随着数据收集和管理的增加，有可能改进疾病的早期检测，因此有可能减少死亡率、痛苦和抗菌药物的使用。持续改善观察，特别是饮食行为，可提高禽鸟的饲料效率-减少废物，改善生产性能，从而减少肉鸡对环境的影响。Pondus与H&S和Hau合作，旨在开发一种具有成本效益的机器人安装摄像头解决方案，以监控肉鸡的健康、体重和行为。试验将在H&S管理的农场举行，庞德斯将创建视觉算法并观察选定的行为，Hau将创建电缆安装的机器人平台。

CableBot is a collaborative project between Pondus, Harper Adams University, and Hudson and Sanders to develop an automated AI livestock monitoring system using low-cost cable mounted roaming robots. Its aim is to improve animal health, performance, and behaviour monitoring, provide live environmental control, improve record keeping, and generate management information. It will address the key issue of diminishing labour availability and the challenge of improving animal health and welfare in livestock production systems, by providing live control of, and information about, conditions in animal buildings, reducing the need for staff to visually monitor livestock behaviours and make environmental control adjustments. Whilst the ultimate intention is to monitor all types of livestock, the initial focus will be on broiler poultry.This project will improve the management of intensively raised broiler chickens through behavioural observation, dead bird location, visual weight calculations and drinker and feeder behaviour. This will be performed using camera based algorithms from a cable mounted robot camera platform, thus creating the 'Cablebot'24/7 monitoring of poultry environments is already performed by Hudson and Sanders. With increased data collection and management it is possible to improve early disease detection and therefore potentially reduce mortality, suffering and antimicrobial use. Continued improvement of observations, particularly that of eating and drinking behaviour can improve the feed efficiency of the birds - reducing waste, improving performance and therefore decreasing the environmental impact of the broiler chickens.Pondus, working with H&S and HAU, aims to develop a cost-effective robot mounted camera solution to monitor broiler chicken health, weight and behaviour. The trials will be hosted on H&S managed farms with Pondus creating the visual algorithms and observing selected behaviours and HAU will be creating the cable mounted robot platform.