What should Artificial Intelligence and Computer Vision tools do for you in the Near Future?

Applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Computer Vision tools are becoming more popular in agricultural settings and expectations are that such tools will be routinely applied to cattle husbandry in the near future. Corporate projects to identify and monitor cows (Taylor 2018; Irish Journal, 2018) and research to automatically detect lameness and to estimate bodyweight have been reported recently (Song et al., 2008; Van Hertem et al., 2013; Fernandes et al., 2018). In addition, the field of precision dairy farming will explore many applications of Artificial Intelligence models in the near future. The field and methods for Computer Vision models are developing so rapidly that today’s abstract will likely be outdated by the time of the presentation. Large volumes of food animal production and health data collected over prolonged periods of time continue to become available while storage and processing capacities are moving into the ‘Cloud’ making Computer Vision models, 

Deep Learning about ‘Big Data’ and their applications increasingly affordable and accessible. This talk wants to describe the need for lameness detection and detection of claw lesions such as Digital dermatitis (DD, syn. Hairy Heel Warts) in real time. There are many opportunities for the installation of cameras for image generation, but the limitations of the current Computer Vision algorithms have to be overcome to make these tools applicable in real time more widely. The presentation will summarize the current developments and demonstrate applications of such models. 

Workshops to teach Artificial Intelligence tools to producers, hoof trimmers, veterinarians and students of agriculture and dairy sciences will emerge in the near future transforming the audiences and professions in agriculture, the long-term monitoring of food animals including our concepts and definitions for health and disease. The practice in the medical and agricultural professions will change as a consequence. If a disconnection between the generations of AI users, programmers and corporate professionals is to be prevented, getting involved in the application of AI tools and communication about the needs for such tools in agriculture is an immediate priority. […]