Monocular Vision Based Boundary Avoidance for Non-Invasive Stray Control System for Cattle: A Conceptual Approach

Abstract

Building fences to manage the cattle grazing can be very expensive; cost inefficient. These do not provide dynamic control over the area in which the cattle are grazing. Existing virtual fencing techniques for the control of herds of cattle, based on polygon coordinate definition of boundaries is limited in the area of land mass coverage and dynamism. This work seeks to develop a more robust and an improved monocular vision based boundary avoidance for non-invasive stray control system for cattle, with a view to increase land mass coverage in virtual fencing techniques and dynamism. The monocular vision based depth estimation will be modeled using concept of global Fourier Transform (FT) and local Wavelet Transform (WT) of image structure of scenes (boundaries). The magnitude of the global Fourier Transform gives the dominant orientations and textual patterns of the image; while the local Wavelet Transform gives the dominant spectral features of the image and their spatial distribution. Each scene picture or image is defined by features v, which contain the set of global (FT) and local (WT) statistics of the image. Scenes or boundaries distances are given by estimating the depth D by means of the image features v. Sound cues of intensity equivalent to the magnitude of the depth D are applied to the animal ears as stimuli. This brings about the desired control as animals tend to move away from uncomfortable sounds.