A face-based automated on-farm pig health monitoring system: IntelliPig

There is a need to ensure the physical and emotional wellbeing of farm pigs. Unfortunately, farmers are not able to monitor their animals continuously and at an individual level in the real farm setting. Our innovative approach will realise an intelligent demonstrator computer vision-based system able to automatically capture useful welfare data for the automated monitoring and management of pigs. By employing state-of-the-art machine learning techniques, such a system would offer the capacity for on-going learning about individuals, and consequently allow for early detection of altered health/welfare, personalised thresholds for intervention, and tailored treatment approaches. Such individualised data recording can be integrated with other measurable parameters, such as individual food and water intake, treatment history, growth and weight gain which will allow better optimisation of farm production efficiency.