US 12,527,299 B2 · Method and apparatus for determining the identity of an animal of a herd of animals

Abstract

A rotary milking platform (3) comprises a plurality of stalls (5) and an RFID animal identifying system (9) for identifying animals entering the stalls (5) of the platform (3). A microprocessor (14) reads signals from an image capturing device (15) and computes a feature vector from the captured image of each animal. A plurality of reference feature vectors comprising respective matrices of metrics already derived from images of the respective animals captured by the image capturing device (15) are stored and cross-referenced with the identity of the respective animals. The microprocessor (14) compares computed feature vectors of each animal with the stored reference feature vectors until a best match has been determined with one of the reference feature vectors. The identity of the animal of that matching reference feature vector is then determined as the identity of the animal of that computed feature vector. The determined identity of the animal in the relevant stall (5) is compared with the identity of the animal determined for that stall (5) by the RFID system (9). On a favourable comparison the identity of the animal determined from the captured image of that animal is confirmed as the identity of the animal. In the event of a conflict between the two identities being determined, a conflict alert signal is produced.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A method for determining the identities of animals of a herd of animals, the method comprising:

storing a plurality of reference images or reference feature vectors of the respective animals of the herd cross-referenced with the identities of the animals,
capturing an image of at least a part of the animal to be identified with an image capturing device,
comparing the captured image or a feature vector computed from the captured image with the stored reference images or the stored reference feature vectors until a best match is detected matching the captured image with one of the reference images, or matching the computed feature vector with one of the reference feature vectors, and determining the identity of the animal based on the best match,
independently determining the identity of the animal of the herd, the identity of which has been determined based on the best match, by an independent identifying system comprising a radio frequency based identifying system,
comparing the identity of that animal determined based on the best match with the identity of that animal determined by the independent identifying system, and
if the two determined identities of that animal are of the same animal, storing the captured image or the computed feature vector of that animal as a confirmed reference image or a confirmed reference feature vector of that animal.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Method and apparatus for determining the identity of an animal of a herd of animals

Life of this patent

Method and apparatus for determining the identity of an animal of a herd of animals

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims20