Method and system for monitoring egg-laying performance of caged laying-hens at laying-hen positions
AssigneeZhejiang University
InventorsJinming Pan, Yifan Liu, Chenghao Pan
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Abstract
A method and system for monitoring the egg-laying performance of caged laying-hens at laying-hen positions are provided. A plurality of coops are disposed side by side, a conveyor belt is disposed below the plurality of coops, and a machine-vision inspection device having a CCD camera and a lighting device is provided on an output end of the conveyor belt. Eggs laid by the hens fall onto the conveyor belt from the bottom of the coops. After all eggs are laid, the conveyor belt is activated to convey the eggs to the machine-vision inspection device, and the CCD camera is triggered to capture an image of a surface of the conveyor belt carrying the eggs.
Claims11
A method for monitoring an egg-laying performance of caged laying-hens at laying-hen positions, comprising:
- disposing a plurality of coops side by side, and disposing a conveyor belt below the plurality of coops, wherein a conveying direction of the conveyor belt is along a direction of disposing the plurality of coops side by side, a machine-vision inspection device is secured on an output end of the conveyor belt, a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera and a lighting device are installed in the machine-vision inspection device, both the CCD camera and the lighting device are located above the conveyor belt and face the conveyor belt, a motor drives the conveyor belt to run, and the motor and the CCD camera are connected to a computer;
- allowing eggs laid by hens in the plurality of coops to fall onto the conveyor belt from a bottom of the plurality of coops, and
- after the hens in the plurality of coops have laid all eggs, activating the conveyor belt, recording a time of activating the conveyor belt, and conveying, by the conveyor belt, the eggs to the machine-vision inspection device;
- and
- after the eggs enter the machine-vision inspection device, triggering the CCD camera to capture an image of a surface of the conveyor belt carrying the eggs, obtaining contours of the eggs in the image through image processing, statistically counting a quantity of the eggs, and obtaining a coop position, a color, a size, and a weight for each egg through further analysis and processing, to implement real-time monitoring;
- wherein the method further comprises:
- when the conveyor belt is activated, starting the CCD camera to collect the image, detecting the contours of the eggs through real-time image analysis and processing, numbering an egg when it is detected that an egg reaches a middle position of the image, and recording a current time tn as an egg arrival time;
- and
- when it is detected that an nth egg passes by, obtaining a coop position x of the nth egg based on the egg arrival time to according to the following formula:
- x
- =
- ⌈
- v
- ·
- (
- t
- n
- -
- t
- 0
- )
- L
- ⌉
- wherein v represents a running speed of the conveyor belt, L represents a length of a single coop, t0 represents an initial running time of the conveyor belt, and Π represents rounding up.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.