Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics may hold the key to giving dairy farmers in-depth data on the health status of their herd, including illness or anxiety. Richard Voyles, a professor in the Purdue Polytechnic Institute, believes artificial intelligence and robotics could hold the key to giving dairy farmers in-depth data on the status of their herd, including illness or anxiety.
According to Richard Voyles “The point is, treating animals well increases productivity by as much as 15%. It’s a substantial increase.”
Even cows have emotions and a happy cow is a better milk producer than one under stress. But how do dairy farmers read an individual bovine animal not known for its facial expression amongst a herd of up to 10,000?
It’s hard to determine the health of cows just by flying over them with a drone. With that in mind, Voyles is looking at the problem inside-out using robotic pills ingested by the cows.
The robotic pills could safely connect data out to a collar on the cow which is then broadcast to a network via either cell phone or wi-fi signal. The research is funded through the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Article source: Want to keep a cow happy? AI, robotics could hold the answer https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2019/Q3/want-to-keep-a-cow-happy-ai%2C-robotics-could-hold-the-answer.html Dairy Council of California / cattle eating habits and cow digestion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meMHJ4Pt8kI
