Supporting eco dairy farming

A major Dutch dairy company is teaming up with AVUTEC?s deep learning experts to find a solution for the ever increasing demand for ecological milk.

Watching free roaming cows all day to pick the right milking moment is a cumbersome task stopping large scale ecological production volumes. With the smart cow detector that belongs to the past. The cow detector is trained to recognize milking-ready udders. Less milking moments. More production.

Matching hardware

To complete the solution, our embedded camera has been transformed to match the project.
The device is known for it’s outstanding Automated NumberPlate Recognition, but can actually do all kinds of recognition tasks. All neural networks can be implemented in the camera’s software platform.

The training process

After agreement on the specific targets, the project started by an extensive period of image data collection at various farmers in the Netherlands. Camera’s were placed taking live footage of grazing cows.
Labeling the dataset needs to be done with precision. Preparation of the dataset is a labor intensive task but essential for end performance. For this part we used farmers with a keen eye for milking ready udders.
Lastly the actual training of the network could start.
After months of field testing and retraining, recognition is up to 99% making the tool ready for the market. The farmers involved are enthusiastic. A single beep on their phone warns them the ladies are ready. Inspecting cattle was never easier.