Herd of cattle, drones care
Cnet
University of Kentucky students are working on a new project. Students are flying a drone with a model cow in the middle of the lab. According to CNET, they are building a system to manage herds of herds using drones.
The reason for creating the system was simple. According to the students' survey, 2.5 million cattle die each year from health problems in the United States. It accounts for 60% of losses. Each cow is worth at least $ 550, which is a huge loss.
Cnet
However, it is difficult to regularly check the health of the cattle in the large plains. If you can see it remotely, your losses will be reduced and your farm manager will be much less burdened.
Students will use drones to solve cattle health and safety issues. It will launch drones on the ranch to identify cows and collect health data from weight to body temperature.
First, drones are blown out to build a formation around the cow. One set of four, one observation drone, the other three are a group drone. Observation drones go up to maximum altitude. Climb 27-82 meters above herds to track their movement and position.
Cnet
Worker drones move according to the observation drone's instructions. When the observation drone specifies a specific cow, the worker drone moves closer to the cow to collect detailed data. Now the system is not fully built, the drone is operated by a computer, the team explained. Now the pilots move the drones in communication with each other, but they will automatically move the drone later.
It is good to collect data with drones, how do cows identify? Could it look so similar to the naked eye that even if the system tells you a cow that is not healthy, you won't recognize it?
"Before launching the drone, it's first to build image processing software," says the team. Photographs of cows from nine different directions are then stitched together using survey methods. By creating a 3D model picture, the record is recorded to recognize the cows individually.
Cnet
In the future, the drone will take pictures and automatically identify them, but now we're building the software, bringing the cows to the lab and using 40 cameras to take pictures at the same time.
The team said they were working on small farms, and they would do a thorough check to see if the cows were free from drone stress until they were introduced. We are going to run an automated experiment by 2021.