The development and evaluation of image analysis procedures for guiding a livestock monitoring sensor placement robot

The overall objective of the work described here is to develop a robotic system capable of holding a sensor in contact with any one of a set of pre-determined positions on the body of a loosely constrained live animal. This paper is concerned with generating sets of coordinates corresponding to the target points on the animalʹs body. The problem was approached using image analysis. Models were established to predict the positions of arbitrary points on the body of a pig from the positions of features in the image of the periphery of the pig, which could be measured automatically. From measurements of the movements of pigs in a feeding stall it was shown that the resultant error in the predicted position of an arbitrary point on the pigʹs body was comparable to that which could be expected from a human operator. The approach of using image analysis to guide a livestock monitoring sensor placement robot shows considerable promise, and is worthy of further investigation. Future work should concentrate on establishing the generality of target point prediction models.