An integrated system for the acoustic monitoring of goat farms

Abstract

Effective precision livestock farming requires the availability of reliable and up-to-date data characterizing the animals and environment of interest. This work presents the design, architecture, and implementation of a wireless acoustic sensor network for monitoring goat farms on a 24/7 basis. In addition, we define a hierarchical organization of the involved sound classes exhaustively covering every aspect of the encountered goat vocalizations. Moreover, we developed an annotation tool tailored to the specifics of the problem at hand, i.e. a big, real-world data environment, able to meaningfully assist the annotation of goat vocalizations via a suitable sound classification module. On top of that, a mobile phone application was developed facilitating authorized users to remotely access information describing the situation on the farm site. Importantly, such a non-invasive monitoring framework was installed in 4 different sites located in Northern Italy while taking into account their diverse characteristics.