SmARtview: An AI-powered Augmented Reality Tool for Animal Health and Productivity

Imagine being able to walk through a herd of cows, instantly recognising each one -- distilling key individual productivity and health data in real-time, so that you can make the best decisions in order to provide her with the optimal care to enhance her production and welfare. Whether a stockperson, vet, nutritionist, breeding technician, farm assurance auditor or supply chain rep -- you can instantly view a dashboard to understand how each cow is performing and her health status, at the cowside.

The emergence of precision agri-tech in the dairy sector has given rise to a multitude of data collection platforms in, around and on dairy cows, such as animal mounted sensors (smart collars, pedometers, tags and boluses), smart milking machines and camera technologies, as well as individual cow records and observations. Farm staff, vets and other advisors are required to access and interpret these multiple data-streams in order to make data-driven decisions on cow health and production management. Yet, accessing multiple data-streams, let alone analysing and interpreting them, is extremely challenging. In practice, the value of much of this data is lost because it cannot be used in a timely and insightful fashion.

We have combined technology from the gaming and agri-tech sectors to solve this deficiency. SmARtview integrates multiple data-streams from any technology platform that is deployed on the farm, using AI to identify an individual cow and access her data, together with AR to visualise the integrated analysis to support data-driven decision-making. This will enable livestock keepers and vets to readily access and interpret -- at the time and place of examining an animal - the data tools at their disposal, in an integrated form that magnifies the value of any single data source -- enabling it to be used to inform point-of-care decisions.

This will advance herd health and productivity, elevating the overall performance of the farm through achieving efficiencies and resulting in improved financial, animal health and environmental performance.

This project takes a radical cross-sector approach by combining expertise in dairy production with the up-to-the-minute technological knowledge, creativity and user experience expertise of the UK gaming industry.