Applicability of a Wireless Fidelity Positioning System to Tracking Free-range Domestic Fowl (Gallus gallus domesticus) and Helmeted Guineafowl (Numida meleagris galeata)

Abstract

This paper reports the results of an experiment for testing the applicability of a Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) positioning system to tracking free-range chickens. In this system, the location of a chicken on a continuous plane (an experiment field) at any time was represented by a point (referred to as a location point) on a one meter square grid lattice, and the trajectory of a chicken by the sequence of its location points. The system recorded the location point of a chicken at every second. The experiment used eight Domestic Fowl (Gallus gallus domesticus) and two Helmeted Guineafowl (Numida meleagris galeata), which were kept freely in a park (170 by 90 m), where their spatial behavior was observed for five days. The complete data were collected for three days. Because the observed location points contained random noise, they were treated as probabilistic variables. Data analysis showed that location accuracy was 2.6 m with a probability of 0.95. The living space of a chicken was represented by a two-dimensional probability density function of location points. The function was estimated by the kernel method with the bi-weight kernel function whose bandwidth was 2.6 m. The trajectory of a chicken was estimated by the moving average method. This experiment showed that the WiFi positioning system was practically applicable to tracking free-range chickens.