Barkom Ltd. is a Ukrainian agricultural company with over 20 years of experience in growing pigs and cattle, as well as selling self-produced food products.
The challenge
On pig farms, weighing animals is a daily, laborious task that also causes unnecessary stress for pigs. Since existing livestock weighing solutions are stationary, workers must herd the animals to the scales and keep them still. To simplify the weighing process, a new solution must address several challenges.
Reduce the time spent on animal weighing
The solution should allow workers to spend minimum time weighing pigs and more time on tasks, like keeping an eye on animals’ health and overseeing their feeding systems.
Ensure high scanning accuracy for detecting pigs for slaughter shipment
With stationary scales, it’s hard to get an accurate weight because the animal keeps moving. But for the market, hitting specific weight ranges is critical — that’s why the solution needs to capture precise weights. Moreover, knowing the trend in pig weight helps to ensure consistent growth across the herd.
Identify pig health issues
With high scanning accuracy, workers should be able to spot if something’s wrong with the pigs, whether they’re gaining too much or too little weight.
Delivered value
First-of-its-kind computer vision-based prototype that automates livestock weight monitoring
It is a portable, lightweight, and easy-to-use device that allows workers to measure pigs even when they are moving.
98% weighing accuracy for moving livestock
As the device can operate in harsh conditions, it gives highly accurate animal measurements — a worker just has to hit one button.
24x less time spent by farm workers on weighing animals
Instead of chasing pigs to the weigh station, workers can just measure animals wherever they are on the farm.
Pig welfare improvement
Animals no longer experience stress from weighing, and their illnesses can be detected through accurate weight measurements.
Solution
The portable computer vision-based solution we developed allows farmers to weigh animals even in motion. Due to its special camera, the device works in low-light conditions. The agricultural company can easily integrate it with the existing infrastructure as well as with third-party livestock weighing systems.
Using this device, farmers can find out a pig’s weight from above, at arm’s height. To make sure it delivers accurate results, our team tested the solution with almost 17TB of real data. The captured picture is processed on the device by a trained neural network, which evaluates the results. Due to machine learning, farmers can teach the device to weigh different breeds of pigs.
To make this device work, Lermberg Solution’s team developed an advanced weight recognition algorithm that uses neural networks with a custom image recognition algorithm. Such an approach gives 98% weighing accuracy.
Overall, the solution went through several stages of development. The early prototypes struggled with different light conditions, making weighing results inconsistent. To fix this, we upgraded the camera to a newer model that helps the neural network accurately identify a pig’s body shape and weight even in low light.
After rigorous testing on a farm, our team has completed the device — now, farmers can easily and accurately measure the weight of their animals.
A built-in camera takes a high-quality 3D image. If there is an issue with a pig in the image, the device notifies the user, allowing them to retake it.
When the picture is taken, the device sends it to the server for processing
A custom weight recognition algorithm analyzes the picture and estimates the pig’s weight.
Delivering result
In 8-10 seconds, the estimated weight appears on the device screen.
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Lou Dutko
Chief Technology Officer
Lou Dutko leads the technology strategy at Lemberg Solutions and supervises the secure delivery process. Lou oversees the quality management system our company has established and ensures Lemberg Solutions operations align with it.
