Alibaba AI system will help farmers monitor the pigs

China accounts for about half the world's pigs. Now farmers China has about 700 million of these animals, so watch out for them and take care, time identifying the sick and weak individuals, is becoming increasingly difficult. On breeders came to the rescue technology company Alibaba, to develop an algorithm of AI, able to monitor their own health and animal spirits - writes The Verge.

The technology of machine vision will allow for automatic accounting of the number of pigs on the seals with animal ears ID, and a special sound recognition system can determine the characteristic sounds of sick animals and in time to warn the veterinary control to prevent an epidemic.

Now the IT-giant Alibaba is in the process of signing documents Dekon Group, the country's largest supplier of pork, and the company Tequ Group, which specializes in the production of animal feed. Now farmers are used to calculate the number of livestock RFID-tags and special radio-frequency identification system that in herds numbering ten million head, is not so effective, because with such a large herd is even difficult to calculate the approximate number of piglets born, not to mention the fact, to provide them with labels. The technology created by Alibaba, involves accounting pigs using the ID, printed on their backs. While the system will recalculate them only in this way, but then the developers are going to offer a more complete solution, for example, suggests the use of infrared sensors to assess their health and well-being. The initial amount of the transaction is around five million dollars, and mass adoption is scheduled for the end of 2019.