Chinese AI ‘tail-tracking’ robot delivers needle-free pig vaccinations with 93% accuracy
In China, robots are being used to inject pigs with vaccines to support intelligent pig farming and meet the production demands of the world’s biggest pork-producing nation. While eating, a pig may not notice the machine approaching from behind before the robot uses a camera to locate the base of the pig’s tail before delivering a needle-free vaccine injection into its buttock. Vaccination is a…
In China, a new robot is being tested to perform needle-free pig vaccinations with high accuracy. This development aims to improve the efficiency and safety of pig farming, as vaccination is a routine task for breeding pigs that traditionally requires significant manual labor. The robot, developed with support from China's National Key Research and Development Programme for New Generation Artificial Intelligence, uses a mobile platform, a six-axis robotic arm, a depth camera, and a needle-free injection module.
It accurately locates the base of a pig's tail using a depth camera and calculates the precise injection point and angle. In field tests at a pig farm in Qinhuangdao, Hebei province, the robot successfully delivered vaccinations to 168 out of 180 pigs, achieving a success rate of 93.3 percent. The robot's performance was affected by sudden movements, posture changes, and pigs lifting their tails during injections.
The research team believes the system can support "less-human, automated and intelligent large-scale pig farming," reducing labor-intensive tasks and improving vaccination accuracy. Future work will focus on enhancing tail-base detection and tracking algorithms to further improve the robot's performance.
Written by urgent.news from Reuters Business via SCMP's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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