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Automatic pig selection system based on body size using a camera: rotating mechanics for pig selection

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Abstract

Since the delivery of different pig sizes at a same time leads to loss profits, the management of pigs to be grown up uniformly is an important task in pig farms. Therefore, automatic sorting system of pigs by size has been introduced. In our proposed system, camera is used to measure the size of pigs. Camera detects the image of a pig and pig’s size is estimated using computer vision technique. The estimated size is used to select the adequate foods for the pig. The novel mechanism that leads the pig to the adequate direction for the feeding is introduced. The proposed mechanism works robustly in the poor environment of a pig farm. It works satisfactorily without disturbing the feeding cycles of pigs in the farms. The system reduces the labor cost and enables the efficient feeding cycles on considering the size of a pig. The weight is also estimated from the size. Experimental result shows the performance of the weight estimation.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to express the deepest appreciation to engineers of System Engineering Corp. who designed the sorting system and assembled it. All animal experiments were conducted in compliance with the protocol which was reviewed by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee and approved by the President of University of Miyazaki (Permit number: 2017-021). This research was supported by grants from the Project of the NARO Bio-oriented Technology Research Advancement Institution (the special scheme project on vitalizing management entities of agriculture, forestry and fisheries). This work was partially supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant number 20H03108.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Miyazaki, Miyazaki, Japan

    Khin Dagon Win, Kikuhito Kawasue, Kumiko Yoshida & Geunho Lee

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  1. Khin Dagon Win
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  2. Kikuhito Kawasue
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  3. Kumiko Yoshida
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  4. Geunho Lee
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Correspondence to Kikuhito Kawasue.

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Win, K.D., Kawasue, K., Yoshida, K. et al. Automatic pig selection system based on body size using a camera: rotating mechanics for pig selection. Artif Life Robotics 26, 155–161 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-020-00654-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-020-00654-y

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