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| CSIRO | SOLVE | Issue 5 Nov 05 | |
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ARTICLE
REMOTE SENSORS: The Secret Life of Cattle
By Gio Braidotti
A cow wearing a GPS unit and antenna is simply not what one expects when visiting a farm, but such high-tech cows are happily participating in a CSIRO study into animal behaviour with potential for improving livestock management tools. The antennae are fitted onto a collar that contains a package of remote sensing technology that, in a sense, will give the animals a say in the development of future livestock management systems. The upshot of the study is that CSIRO scientists are able to monitor livestock remotely from a laptop and look beyond geographical location and into social interactions that can affect scenarios such as the spread of disease and calf development. This work is an important part of CSIRO’s Food Futures Flagship, which draws together research aimed at adding value to Australia’s agrifood systems.
Serendipitously, the Robotics Group at the CSIRO ICT Centre had already developed appropriate sensors and electronics, but were engineering these components into robots such as Mantis, a small remote-controlled helicopter, developed for use primarily by the mining industry. “We already had low-cost sensors to orient an object in space,” explains Dr Peter Corke, who made the connection. “These were exactly what the Food Futures Flagship project required. The sensors were re-engineered, repackaged and applied to a really interesting problem.” The result is a collar composed of a GPS unit, inertial sensor, digital compass, transceiver and even an onboard processing unit, that together offer sophisticated insights into animal behaviour. “Social interactions, calf–cow relationships, herd movement and even carrying capacity of the environment can all be tracked,” Dr Swain says. “This kind of information has important implications for graziers, offering improvements in food safety, disease prevention, improved breeding programs and even market access.” Studying social interactions ultimately allows more natural behaviour to be incorporated into livestock management systems. The impact is especially significant for graziers tending free-ranging animals in remote terrain typical of northern Australia, Brazil and Argentina. The commercial potential of the technology for tracking and monitoring all sorts of high-value animals and objects, prompted CSIRO to obtain three patents covering the unique sensing technology. For further information contact: |
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“We want to build on the ear-tags required by the National Livestock Identification System, which traces animals from paddock to plate,” says Dr Dave Swain of CSIRO Livestock Industries. “The goal is to introduce more functions to the tags and increase the amount of information captured, so that we can help graziers better manage those factors that are important to breeders, health and safety regulators, and even consumers and environmentalists.”
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