In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Magic 8 Balls were a hit. Kids across the country felt as though they held the future in their hands, violently shaking the toy until it gave nothing more than a grey answer.
Being able to predict the future is something every industry dreams of, especially agriculture. Knowing what the economy, weather, and future looks like serves as a major benefit for various aspects of a farming operation. Particularly, disease in cattle is an aspect of farming that no one ever wants to prepare for, but often finds themselves dealing with.
If only there was a Magic 8 Ball that farmers could use to predict what diseases were going to occur and which cows were most susceptible. With new technology being developed by researchers at the University of Tennessee, this wishful thinking is slowly becoming a reality.
Jayne Wu, Shigetoshi Eda, Qing Charles Cao, and Hairong Qi make up the team that brought their specialty skill sets to the drawing board with the goal of creating a technology that could alleviate pressure on farmers. The project’s motivation is rooted in the need for diagnostics on dairy farms, considering the implications that disease can have on a herd. “There are (diagnostic) products available for humans, but not for animals,” explained Wu.
With mastitis being the leading cause of death in lactating dairy cattle, the disease creates not only a physical burden on the cows but a severe financial impact to the farmer. With the university’s East Tennessee AgResearch and Education Center at their fingertips, the researchers dove into technology development.
Wu and Eda’s specialty is in the bovine disease detection technology, the biosensor that’s better known as AiCap. The patented device was refined with the help of Qi, who was able to improve its interpretation of noisy data with the usage of artificial intelligence. The AiCap biosensor is a platform that can collaborate with several technologies, identifies pathogens in raw milk, and can detect diseases beyond just mastitis.
The researchers are using the AiCap biosensor in conjunction with an internet of things (IoT) network, Cao’s specialty, to reduce incidence of disease on dairy farms. The IoT network has sensors that can monitor and detect cattle behavior, which particularly notes the cows’ sleeping and walking patterns. Any abnormal patterns would help identify potential disease or disease transmission.
The goal of the technology is to narrow down disease transmission to prevent outbreaks. By observing the animals with abnormal sleeping and walking patterns with the IoT device, the farm can correctly identify animals within the herd that are most likely to be sick. This reduces the financial burden of ordering unnecessary tests and could potentially prevent disease from spreading.
The AiCap biosensor is still in development and not available for full farm use yet. Once the technology is licensed, the professors intend to make it open for commercial use for other companies to adapt to their own products or for dairies to use on their own.
The intention with the technology is to eventually build a simulation that can actively tell the farmer how to respond to information based on real-time data. Cao described this project as “state of the art technology” that allows collaboration between artificial intelligence and precision agriculture, which takes advantage of sensor readings to predict a farm’s next steps. With the unpredictable nature of any dairy farm, this technology could be the dairy industry’s new Magic 8 Ball.
