Automatic pig selection system based on body size using a camera: rotating mechanics for pig selection
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Automatic pig selection system based on body size using a camera: rotating mechanics for pig selection Khin Dagon Win1 · Kikuhito Kawasue1 · Kumiko Yoshida1 · Geunho Lee1 Received: 12 March 2020 / Accepted: 18 September 2020 © International Society of Artificial Life and Robotics (ISAROB) 2020
Abstract Since the delivery of different pig sizes at a same time leads to loss profits, the management of pigs to be grown up uniformly is an important task in pig farms. Therefore, automatic sorting system of pigs by size has been introduced. In our proposed system, camera is used to measure the size of pigs. Camera detects the image of a pig and pig’s size is estimated using computer vision technique. The estimated size is used to select the adequate foods for the pig. The novel mechanism that leads the pig to the adequate direction for the feeding is introduced. The proposed mechanism works robustly in the poor environment of a pig farm. It works satisfactorily without disturbing the feeding cycles of pigs in the farms. The system reduces the labor cost and enables the efficient feeding cycles on considering the size of a pig. The weight is also estimated from the size. Experimental result shows the performance of the weight estimation. Keywords Automatic sorting system · Camera · Computer vision · Pig size · Rotating mechanism
1 Introduction In a pig farm, a few numbers of workers have to handle hundreds of pigs, which causes hard work. The decline of young workers makes the problem even more serious. From the viewpoint of sustainable food maintenance, some improvements are necessary. In a big pig house, 100–200 pigs are reared together from piglets’ time, and when they grow up to a certain size, they are shipped at a same time. At the start of breeding, the sizes of pigs may be almost same, but the difference of appetite directly influences on identical growth. Therefore, the growing rate of each pig becomes different and several sizes of pigs existed in a pig house after couples of months. As the small pigs are weakened by the bigger one, the differences of the size become bigger and bigger. In fact, different sizes of pigs are shipped together at the same time. However, the delivery of small pigs leads to loss profits. Under the This work was presented in part at the 25th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics (Beppu, Oita, January 22-24, 2020). * Kikuhito Kawasue [email protected]‑u.ac.jp 1
University of Miyazaki, Miyazaki, Japan
ideal condition, all pigs should be shipped with same size at the same time to get a maximum profit. Therefore, precise weight control is required during grow process. Recently, pig-sorting systems have been developed in Europe, the US, etc.[1, 2]. These systems are set on the path to the food area and the weight of a pig is measured when the pig is in a path to the food area. The delivery schedule of a pig is determined by his weight. Some systems have been adopted at actual farms but many farmers cannot determine the adoption of system for the m
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