Smart Computing and Sensing Technologies for Animal Welfare

Abstract

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 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 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.

Bee Swarm Activity Acoustic Classification for an IoT-Based Farm Service

“…Digital farming is one of the key technologies which has been gaining support through different research initiatives in the last decade. The fundamental digital farming setup consists of the central management platform [1], human-computer interfaces [2] and particular IoT modules [3], which monitor the animals, their behavior and facilities. All these building blocks are connected [4] into a common platform, using communication networks which are, today, frequently based on IoT architecture combined with cloud or edge-based functionalities.…”

SmartHerd management: A microservices‐based fog computing–assisted IoT platform towards data‐driven smart dairy farming

“…Another recent survey by Jukan et al identifies the lack of interoperability provided by such systems and identify the need of developing an integrated system combining edge, fog, and cloud to provide application and services. The authors here also identify that technology solutions with no consideration of interoperability results in vendor lock‐in, which not only hinders innovation but also results in higher costs for the farmer/user.…”

“…They follow the technique to process and analyze previously collected data and perform offline analysis, which is not suitable for real-time tracking and monitoring of dynamic entities such as dairy cows. The gaps with the existing research are that either it has been developed out of the agricultural context or address the issue of network connectivity, analytics, and control in isolation; this has also been identified as key limitations by Zheleva et al 45 Another recent survey by Jukan et al 46 identifies the lack of interoperability provided by such systems and identify the need of developing an integrated system combining edge, fog, and cloud to provide application and services. The authors here also identify that technology solutions with no consideration of interoperability results in vendor lock-in, which not only hinders innovation but also results in higher costs for the farmer/user.…”

IoT based Animal Health Monitoring and Crop Monitoring System

“…Ibrahim Mat et al greenhouse environment using WSN, which achieve optimum irrigation. Automatic irrigation will optimize the usage of water and fertilizer and furthermore maintain the moisture level and healthiness of the plant [2]. Milija Bajeta et al discusses an implementation of private IoT cloud platform for the use in precision agriculture and ecological monitoring [3].…”