{"title":"Artificial intelligence-enhanced walk-over-weighing system for real-time livestock weight monitoring: A novel approach for precision farming","authors":"İsmail Kırbaş","doi":"10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106673","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Accurate and consistent livestock weight monitoring is a cornerstone of modern precision farming, yet conventional methods remain labor-intensive, induce animal stress, and provide infrequent data. While automated systems have emerged, they often lack the intelligence to translate weight data into actionable health insights. This study introduces and validates a novel Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enhanced Walk-Over-Weighing (WoW) system designed to overcome these limitations through real-time, autonomous monitoring.</div><div>The system integrates a stress-free platform with high-precision load cells, RFID for individual animal identification, and dual ESP32 modules for robust data processing. Its core innovation lies in a dual AI framework: a Random Forest regression model was developed for precise weight prediction under dynamic conditions, while a One-Class Support Vector Machine (SVM) was implemented for unsupervised anomaly detection. The integrated system was validated on a herd of 90 dairy cows (Holstein and Simmental), with its performance evaluated against static reference measurements.</div><div>The results demonstrated exceptional performance. The weight prediction model achieved a coefficient of determination (R²) greater than 0.98 and a Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) below 0.5 %, signifying high accuracy and reliability even with animal movement. Furthermore, the anomaly detection model proved effective at identifying simulated health events, achieving a classification accuracy of 0.95.</div><div>Crucially, these findings establish that the WoW system transcends simple measurement, functioning as a proactive, non-invasive health monitoring tool. By identifying subtle deviations from expected growth patterns, the platform enables the early detection of potential health issues, thereby enhancing animal welfare, reducing economic losses, and promoting more sustainable, data-driven farming practices.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":20413,"journal":{"name":"Preventive veterinary medicine","volume":"245 ","pages":"Article 106673"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4000,"publicationDate":"2025-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Preventive veterinary medicine","FirstCategoryId":"97","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167587725002582","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"VETERINARY SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Accurate and consistent livestock weight monitoring is a cornerstone of modern precision farming, yet conventional methods remain labor-intensive, induce animal stress, and provide infrequent data. While automated systems have emerged, they often lack the intelligence to translate weight data into actionable health insights. This study introduces and validates a novel Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enhanced Walk-Over-Weighing (WoW) system designed to overcome these limitations through real-time, autonomous monitoring.
The system integrates a stress-free platform with high-precision load cells, RFID for individual animal identification, and dual ESP32 modules for robust data processing. Its core innovation lies in a dual AI framework: a Random Forest regression model was developed for precise weight prediction under dynamic conditions, while a One-Class Support Vector Machine (SVM) was implemented for unsupervised anomaly detection. The integrated system was validated on a herd of 90 dairy cows (Holstein and Simmental), with its performance evaluated against static reference measurements.
The results demonstrated exceptional performance. The weight prediction model achieved a coefficient of determination (R²) greater than 0.98 and a Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) below 0.5 %, signifying high accuracy and reliability even with animal movement. Furthermore, the anomaly detection model proved effective at identifying simulated health events, achieving a classification accuracy of 0.95.
Crucially, these findings establish that the WoW system transcends simple measurement, functioning as a proactive, non-invasive health monitoring tool. By identifying subtle deviations from expected growth patterns, the platform enables the early detection of potential health issues, thereby enhancing animal welfare, reducing economic losses, and promoting more sustainable, data-driven farming practices.
期刊介绍:
Preventive Veterinary Medicine is one of the leading international resources for scientific reports on animal health programs and preventive veterinary medicine. The journal follows the guidelines for standardizing and strengthening the reporting of biomedical research which are available from the CONSORT, MOOSE, PRISMA, REFLECT, STARD, and STROBE statements. The journal focuses on:
Epidemiology of health events relevant to domestic and wild animals;
Economic impacts of epidemic and endemic animal and zoonotic diseases;
Latest methods and approaches in veterinary epidemiology;
Disease and infection control or eradication measures;
The "One Health" concept and the relationships between veterinary medicine, human health, animal-production systems, and the environment;
Development of new techniques in surveillance systems and diagnosis;
Evaluation and control of diseases in animal populations.