Smart Computing and Sensing Technologies for Animal Welfare: A Systematic Review

Animals play a profoundly important and intricate role in our lives today. Dogs have been human companions for thousands of years, but they now work closely with us to assist the disabled, and in combat and search and rescue situations. Farm animals are a critical part of the global food supply chain, and there is increasing consumer interest in organically fed and humanely raised livestock, and how it impacts our health and environmental footprint. Wild animals are threatened with extinction by human induced factors, and shrinking and compromised habitat. This review sets the goal to systematically survey the existing literature in smart computing and sensing technologies for domestic, farm and wild animal welfare. We use the notion of \emph{animal welfare} in broad terms, to review the technologies for assessing whether animals are healthy, free of pain and suffering, and also positively stimulated in their environment. Also the notion of \emph{smart computing and sensing} is used in broad terms, to refer to computing and sensing systems that are not isolated but interconnected with communication networks, and capable of remote data collection, processing, exchange and analysis. We review smart technologies for domestic animals, indoor and outdoor animal farming, as well as animals in the wild and zoos. The findings of this review are expected to motivate future research and contribute to data, information and communication management as well as policy for animal welfare

Efficient model checking for timing diagrams

textComputer Science

Combining Abstraction Refinement and SAT-based Model Checking

Abstract. Unbounded model checking methods based on Boolean satisfiability (SAT) solvers are proving to be a viable alternative to BDD-based model checking. These methods include, for example, interpolation based and sequential ATPG-based approaches. In this paper, we explore the implications of using abstraction refinement in conjunction with interpolation-based model checking. Based on experiments using a large industrial benchmark set, we conclude that when using interpolationbased model checking, measures must be taken to prevent the overhead of abstraction refinement from dominating runtime. We present two new approaches to this problem. One is a hybrid approach that decides heuristically when to apply abstraction. The other is a very coarse but inexpensive abstraction method based on ideas from ATPG. This approach can produce order-of-magnitude reductions in memory usage, allowing significantly larger designs to be verified.

Efficient Decompositional Model-Checking for Regular Timing Diagrams

There is a growing need to make verification tools easier to use. A solution that does not require redesigning the tool is to construct front-ends providing specification notations that are close to those used in practice. Timing diagrams are such a widely used graphical notation, one that is often more appealing than a "linear" textual notation. This paper introduces a class of timing diagrams called Regular Timing Diagrams (RTDs). RTDs have a precise syntax and a formal semantics that is simple and corresponds to common usage. In addition, RTDs have an inherent compositional structure, which is exploited to provide an efficient algorithm for model-checking an RTD with respect to a system description. The algorithm has time complexity that is a small polynomial in the size of the diagram and linear in the size of the structure. We demonstrate the applicability of our algorithms by verifying that a master-slave system satisfies its specification RTDs

Smart computing and sensing technologies for animal welfare: A systematic review

Animals play a profoundly important and intricate role in our lives today. Dogs have been human companions for thousands of years, but now they work to assist the disabled, and in combat and search and rescue situations. Farm animals are a critical part of sustainable agriculture today, and there is increasing consumer interest in humanely raised livestock, and how it impacts our health and environmental footprint. Wild animals are threatened with extinction by human induced factors, and shrinking and compromised habitats. There are many reasons, including societal and economic ones, to explore how new computing technologies can be used to ensure the welfare of animals in these settings. The goal of this review is to systematically survey the existing literature in smart computing and sensing technologies for domestic, farm, and wild animal welfare. We use a broad notion of animal welfare to refer to an assessment of whether animals are healthy, free of pain and suffering, and positively stimulated in their environment. Smart computing and sensing is also used in broad terms, to refer to systems that are not isolated but interconnected with communication networks, and capable of remote data collection, processing, exchange, and analysis. The findings of this review are expected to motivate future research in computer science and engineering, as well as contribute to data, information, and communication management for animal welfare