Animal lameness detection with radar sensing

Lameness is a significant problem for performance horses and farmed animals, with severe impact on animal welfare and treatment costs. Lameness is commonly diagnosed through subjective scoring methods performed by trained veterinary clinicians, but automatic methods using suitable sensors would improve efficiency and reliability. In this paper, we propose the use of radar micro-Doppler signatures for contactless and automatic identification of lameness, and present preliminary results for dairy cows, sheep, and horses. These proof-of-concept results are promising, with classification accuracy above 85% for dairy cows, around 92% for horses, and close to 99% for sheep

Radar for Assisted Living in the Context of Internet of Things for Health and Beyond

This paper discusses the place of radar for assisted living in the context of IoT for Health and beyond. First, the context of assisted living and the urgency to address the problem is described. The second part gives a literature review of existing sensing modalities for assisted living and explains why radar is an upcoming preferred modality to address this issue. The third section presents developments in machine learning that helps improve performances in classification especially with deep learning with a reflection on lessons learned from it. The fourth section introduces recent published work from our research group in the area that shows promise with multimodal sensor fusion for classification and long short-term memory applied to early stages in the radar signal processing chain. Finally, we conclude with open challenges still to be addressed in the area and open to future research directions in animal welfare

Evaluation of lameness detection using radar sensing in ruminants

Background: Lameness is a major health, welfare and production-limiting condition for the livestock industries. The current ‘gold-standard’ method of assessing lameness by visual locomotion scoring is subjective and time consuming, whereas recent technological advancements have enabled the development of alternative and more objective methods for its detection. Methods: This study evaluated a novel lameness detection method using micro-Doppler radar signatures to categorise animals as lame or non-lame. Animals were visually scored by veterinarian and radar data were collected for the same animals. Results: A machine learning algorithm was developed to interpret the radar signatures and provide automatic classification of the animals. Using veterinary scoring as a standard method, the classification by radar signature provided 85 per cent sensitivity and 81 per cent specificity for cattle and 96 per cent sensitivity and 94 per cent specificity for sheep. Conclusion: This radar sensing method shows promise for the development of a highly functional, rapid and reliable recognition tool of lame animals, which could be integrated into automatic, on-farm systems for sheep and cattle

Challenges in Developing a Real-time Bee-counting Radar

MDPI Sensors journal paper published on 01/06/2023: "Detailed within is an attempt to implement a real-time radar signal classification system to monitor and count bee activity at the hive entry. There is interest in keeping records of the productivity of honeybees. Activity at the entrance can be a good measure of overall health and capacity, and a radar-based approach could be cheap, low power, and versatile, beyond other techniques. Fully automated systems would enable simultaneous, large-scale capturing of bee activity patterns from multiple hives, providing vital data for ecological research and business practice improvement. Data from a Doppler radar were gathered from managed beehives on a farm. Recordings were split into 0.4 s windows, and Log Area Ratios (LARs) were computed from the data. Support vector machine models were trained to recognize flight behavior from the LARs, using visual confirmation recorded by a camera. Spectrogram deep learning was also investigated using the same data. Once complete, this process would allow for removing the camera and accurately counting the events by radar-based machine learning alone. Challenging signals from more complex bee flights hindered progress. System accuracy of 70% was achieved, but clutter impacted the overall results requiring intelligent filtering to remove environmental effects from the data."Open Access. Funded by the Knowledge Econ- omy Skills Scholarships (KESS 2, Ref: BUK2E001) Welsh European Funding Office (WEFO): c81133

Automated dairy cattle lameness detection utilizing the power of artificial intelligence; current status quo and future research opportunities.

Lameness represents a major welfare and health problem for the dairy industry across all farming systems. Visual mobility scoring, although very useful, is labour-intensive and physically demanding, especially in large dairies, often leading to inconsistencies and inadequate uptake of the practice. Technological and computational advancements of artificial intelligence (AI) have led to the development of numerous automated solutions for livestock monitoring. The objective of this study was to review the automated systems using AI algorithms for lameness detection developed to-date. These systems rely on gait analysis using accelerometers, weighing platforms, acoustic analysis, radar sensors and computer vision technology. The lameness features of interest, the AI techniques used to process the data as well as the ground truth of lameness selected in each case are described. Measures of accuracy regarding correct classification of cows as lame or non-lame varied with most systems being able to classify cows with adequate reliability. Most studies used visual mobility scoring as the ground truth for comparison with only a few studies using the presence of specific foot pathologies. Given the capabilities of AI, and the benefits of early treatment of lameness, longitudinal studies to identify gait abnormalities using automated scores related to the early developmental stages of different foot pathologies are required. Farm-specific optimal thresholds for early intervention should then be identified to ameliorate cow health and welfare but also minimise unnecessary inspections

Exploring the potential of Precision Livestock Farming technologies to help address farm animal welfare

The rise in the demand for animal products due to demographic and dietary changes has exacerbated difficulties in addressing societal concerns related to the environment, human health and animal welfare. As a response to this challenge, Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) technologies are being developed to monitor animal health and welfare parameters in a continuous and automated way, offering the opportunity to improve productivity and detect health issues at an early stage. However, ethical concerns have been raised regarding their potential to facilitate the management of production systems that are potentially harmful to animal welfare, or to impact the human-animal relationship and farmers’ duty of care. Using the Five Domains Model (FDM) as a framework, the aim is to explore the potential of PLF to help address animal welfare and to discuss potential welfare benefits and risks of using such technology. A variety of technologies are identified and classified according to their type (sensors, bolus, image or sound based, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)), their development stage, the species they apply to, and their potential impact on welfare. While PLF technologies have promising potential to reduce the occurrence of diseases and injuries in livestock farming systems, their current ability to help promote positive welfare states remains limited, as technologies with such potential generally remain at earlier development stages. This is likely due to the lack of evidence related to the validity of positive welfare indicators as well as challenges in technology adoption and development. Finally, the extent to which welfare can be improved will also strongly depend on whether management practices will be adapted to minimize negative consequences and maximize benefits to welfare

Ganadería de precisión en vacuno de carne

La ganadería de precisión es el conjunto de herramientas que permiten la automatización de las labores de granja y brindan información útil para la toma de decisiones orientadas a la eficiencia productiva del ganado. Esta revisión sistemática identificó las diferentes herramientas de ganadería de precisión probadas en vacuno de carne. Se utilizaron palabras claves que permitieran abarcar las diferentes herramientas existentes en las bases de datos en inglés de Web of Science (WoS) y ProQuest (PQ), utilizándose el gestor bibliográfico EndNote online. De los registros encontrados, se hizo una selección de trabajos relevantes en base al título y el resumen y se accedió posteriormente al trabajo completo de aquellos pre-seleccionados a través del acceso desde la biblioteca de la Universidad de Zaragoza o de búsquedas directas en Google. Finalmente, las 97 publicaciones que se encontraron se clasificaron según la utilidad que ofrecen las herramientas al ganadero en: identificación electrónica, reproducción, peso automático, medidas corporales, rastreo del animal, vallado virtual, monitorización de la salud, bienestar animal, alimentación, rumia, medio ambiente y granjas inteligentes. Según los resultados se pudo concluir que la ganadería de precisión ayuda al ganadero a resolver problemas particulares o más globales de la producción de carne. Sin embargo, es necesario el desarrollo de más estudios para ampliar la información enfocada en ganado vacuno de carne, y desarrollar más herramientas de precisión a nivel comercial o mejorar las existentes, para incentivar la implementación de tecnología en la granja ganadera y que le ayude a producir de manera más sostenible.<br /

Mobility classification of cattle with micro-Doppler radar

Lameness in dairy cattle is a welfare concern that negatively impacts animal productivity and farmer profitability. Micro-Doppler radar sensing has been previously suggested as a potential system for automating lameness detection in ruminants. This thesis investigates the refinement of the proposed automated system by analysing and enhancing the repeatability and accuracy of the existing scoring method in cattle mobility scoring, used to provide labels in machine learning. The main aims of the thesis were (1) to quantify the performance of the micro-Doppler radar sensing method for the assessment of mobility, (2) to characterise and validate micro-Doppler radar signatures of dairy cattle with varying degrees of gait impairment, and (3) to develop machine learning algorithms that can infer the mobility status of the animals under test from their radar signatures and support automatic contactless classification. The first study investigated inter-assessor agreement using a 4-level system and modifications to it, as well as the impact of factors such as mobility scoring experience, confidence in scoring decisions, and video characteristics. The results revealed low levels of agreement between assessors' scores, with kappa values ranging from 0.16 to 0.53. However, after transforming and reducing the mobility scoring system levels, an improvement was observed, with kappa values ranging from 0.2 to 0.67. Subsequently, a longitudinal study was conducted using good-agreement scores as ground truth labels in supervised machine-learning models. However, the accuracy of the algorithmic models was found to be insufficient, ranging from 0.57 to 0.63. To address this issue, different labelling systems and data pre-processing techniques were explored in a cross-sectional study. Nonetheless, the inter-assessor agreement remained challenging, with an average kappa value of 0.37 (SD = 0.16), and high-accuracy algorithmic predictions remained elusive, with an average accuracy of 56.1 (SD =16.58). Finally, the algorithms' performance was tested with high-confidence labels, which consisted of only scores 0 and 3 of the AHDB system. This testing resulted in good classification accuracy (0.82), specificity (0.79), and sensitivity (0.85). This led to the proposal of a new approach to producing labels, testing vantage point changes, and improving the performance of machine learning models (average accuracy = 0.7 & SD = 0.17, average sensitivity = 0.68 & SD = 0.27, average specificity = 0.75 & SD = 0.17). The research identified a challenge in creating high-confidence diagnostic labels for supervised machine learning-based algorithms to automate the detection and classification of lameness in dairy cows. As a result, the original goals were partially overridden, with the focus shifted to creating reliable labels that would perform well with radar data and machine learning. This point was considered necessary for smooth system development and process automation. Nevertheless, we managed to quantify the performance of the micro-Doppler radar system, partially develop the supervised machine learning algorithms, compare levels of agreement among multiple assessors, evaluate the assessment tools, assess the mobility evaluation process and gather a valuable data set which can be used as a foundation for subsequent studies. Finally, the thesis suggests changes in the assessment process to improve the prediction accuracy of algorithms based on supervised machine learning with radar data

Validating a Proposed Data Mining Approach (SLDM) for Motion Wearable Sensors to Detect the Early Signs of Lameness in Sheep

Lameness can be described as painful erratic movements, which relate to a locomotor system and result in the animal deviating from its normal gait or posture. Lameness is considered one of the major health and welfare concerns for the sheep industry in the UK that leads to a substantial economic problem and causes a reduction in overall farm productivity. According to a report in 2013 by ADAS entitled ‘Economic Impact of Health and Welfare Issues in Beef, Cattle and Sheep in England’, each lame ewe costs £89.80 due to the decline in body condition, lambing percentage, growth rate, and reduced fertility. Thus, early lameness detection eliminates the negative impact of lameness and increase the chance of favourable outcome from treatment. The development of wearable sensor technologies enables the idea of remotely monitoring the changes in animal behaviours or movements which relate to lameness. The aim of this thesis was to evaluate the feasibility and accessibility of a proposed data mining approach (SLDM) to detect the early signs of lameness in sheep via analysing the retrieved data from a mounted wearable motion sensor within a sheep’s neck collar through investigating the most cost effective factors that contribute to lameness detection within the whole data mining process including; sensor sampling rate, segmentation methods, window size, extracted features, feature selection methods, and applicable classification algorithm. Three classes are recognised for sheep while their walking throughout the data collection process (sound, mild, and severe lameness classes). The sheep data were collected using three different sensor applications (Sheep Tracker, SensoDuino, SensorLog) which collect sheep data movements at different sampling rates 10, 5, and 4 Hz. Various sensing data were retrieved in X,Y, and Z dimensions; however, only accelerometer, gyroscope, and orientation readings are considered in the current study. Four sheep datasets are aggregated each of which includes 31, 10, 18, and 7 sheep. The conducted work in this thesis evaluates the performance of ensemble classifiers (Bagging, Boosting, or RusBoosting) using three different validation methods (5-fold, 0.3 hold-out, and proposed one ‘Single Sheep Splitting’) in comparison to three sampling rates (10, 5, 4 Hz), two segmentation approaches (FNSW and FOSW), three feature selection methods (ReliefF, GA, and RF) and three window sizes (10, 7, 5 sec.). Promising results of lameness prediction accuracies are achieved over most of the combinations (3 sampling rates, two segmentation methods, 3 window sizes, 183 extracted features, 3 feature selection methods, 3 ensemble classification models, and 3 model validation methods). However, the highest accuracy is revealed by using the `Bagging ensemble classifier 88.92% with F-score of 87.7%, 91.1%, 88.2% for sound walking, mildly walking, and severely walking classes, respectively. The results are obtained using 5-fold cross-validation over a 10 sec.window for sheep data collected at 10 Hz sampling rate using only the accelerometer hardware sensor reading and calculated orientation readings. The number of features selected is 46 optimised by GA using CHAID tree as a fitness function. Conversely, the lowest prediction accuracy of 56.25% with F-score (63.4% sound walking, 51.9% mildly walking, 48.8% severely walking) is recorded when RusBoosting ensemble is applied using 5-fold cross-validation over a 10 sec.window for dataset collected at the 4 Hz. sampling rate. So, the major research findings recommend that 10 Hz sampling rate is adequate for collect sheep movements, while the best segmentation method is FOSW as 20% of data-points are shared between two successive windows. Whereas, the preferable number of data-points (sheep movements) to be pre-processed is around 100, which is obtained when a 10 sec.window size or 7 sec.window size is applied. Additionally, the 20 features selected by RF out of 183 features could reveal good accuracy results compared to the whole set of extracted features. Although that GA feature selection method has slower execution time than RF, competitive prediction accuracy could be achieved when the selected features by GA were fed to the classifier. Finally, the acceleration sensor data alone are capable of making the decision about the lame sheep. So no extra hardware sensors like Gyroscope is required for decision making; moreover, the orientation sensor features could be directly derived from Acc which contribute most to lameness detection. Since the most cost effective factors are identified in this research, the practice in the meanwhile could be applicable for farmers, stakeholders, and manufacturers as no available sensor to detect the lame sheep developed yet. Therefore, the multidisciplinary nature of the conducted research opens diverse paths towards applying further research studies to develop various data mining approaches and practical sensor kits to detect the early signs of sheep’s lameness for better farm productivity and sheep industry prosperity in the UK