The TU Wien, University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria (Campus Hagenberg) and Vetmeduni have launched an interdisciplinary Doctoral School on Precision Livestock Farming (“PLFDoc”), funded by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF). PLFDoc will focus on application-oriented basic research, in particular on new methods of Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) and Computer Vision technologies for health and welfare monitoring in livestock. The successful candidate will work in an interdisciplinary team as part of PLFDoc.
The PhD thesis focuses on the development of computer vision algorithms for calving prediction. Behaviours that need to be detected to predict calving are, e.g. separation of animals from herd mates, tail raising, restlessness, turning the head toward the abdomen and stepping. A second aim of the study is to get detailed information about the effects of group size and human interventions on cows’ behaviour during parturition, and if this affects the validity of automated calving prediction.