1978: What can the ‘facial action coding system’ tell us about animal health?

Until recently Marwa Mahmoud’s work was focussed on human behaviour understanding, automatically detecting social signals from facial expressions and body gestures in the context of automotive applications and healthcare. She is now applying her expertise in computer vision and machine learning to livestock, in particular to provide early warning of contagious disease in sheep.
She says: “Sheep are prey animals and so have evolved to hide signs of pain or lameness when predators are around.  We are working on systems that can detect these signs of illness when humans are not present, using machine learning to predict early signs of pain and distress by automatically analysing their facial expressions and gait.”
Marwa is working with collaborators from University of Chester and University of Lincoln on field trials to gather training data to build robust machine learning models that are able to distinguish between healthy and ill sheep, the first step towards automated disease detection.

REAP 2021: Changing Time(s) for Agriculture – 10th November 2021

Imagine a world where agriculture is not constrained by time. The ability to manage and manipulate time is increasing and REAP 2021 will explore the advances in technology and breakthroughs in science that is making this possible.
REAP brings together people from across the agri-tech ecosystem who believe that innovation is the engine for change. The conference bridges the gap between producer needs and technology solutions and showcases exciting agri-tech start-ups.