Cablebot - the cable mounted poultry welfare monitoring robot

CableBot是Pondus、哈珀亚当斯大学、哈德逊和桑德斯之间的一个合作项目，旨在开发一种使用低成本电缆安装的漫游机器人的自动AI牲畜监测系统。其目的是改善动物健康，性能和行为监测，提供现场环境控制，改善记录保存，并生成管理信息。它将解决劳动力供应减少的关键问题以及改善畜牧生产系统中动物健康和福利的挑战，方法是提供动物饲养场条件的实时控制和信息，减少工作人员视觉监测牲畜行为的需要，并进行环境控制调整。虽然最终目的是监测所有类型的牲畜，但最初的重点将是肉鸡。该项目将通过行为观察、死鸟位置、视觉重量计算以及饮水和喂食行为来改善集约化饲养的肉鸡的管理。这将使用来自电缆安装的机器人摄像机平台的基于摄像机的算法来执行，从而创建哈德逊和桑德斯已经执行的家禽环境的“Cablebot”24/7监测。随着数据收集和管理的增加，有可能改善早期疾病检测，从而有可能减少死亡率、痛苦和抗菌剂的使用。持续改进观察，特别是饮食行为的观察，可以提高家禽的饲料效率-减少浪费，提高性能，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，以监测肉鸡的健康，体重和行为。试验将在H&S管理的农场进行，Pondus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.