The Design and Evaluation of a Mobile Sensor/Actuator Network for Autonomous Animal Control

This paper investigates a mobile, wireless sensor/actuator network application for use in the cattle breeding industry. Our goal is to prevent fighting between bulls in on-farm breeding paddocks by autonomously applying appropriate stimuli when one bull approaches another bull. This is an important application because fighting between high-value animals such as bulls during breeding seasons causes significant financial loss to producers. Furthermore, there are significant challenges in this type of application because it requires dynamic animal state estimation, real-time actuation and efficient mobile wireless transmissions. We designed and implemented an animal state estimation algorithm based on a state-machine mechanism for each animal. Autonomous actuation is performed based on the estimated states of an animal relative to other animals. A simple, yet effective, wireless communication model has been proposed and implemented to achieve high delivery rates in mobile environments. We evaluated the performance of our design by both simulations and field experiments, which demonstrated the effectiveness of our autonomous animal control system.

[1]  Caroline Lee,et al.  Methods of training cattle to avoid a location using electrical cues , 2007 .

[2]  Wei Hong,et al.  A macroscope in the redwoods , 2005, SenSys '05.

[3]  Deborah Estrin,et al.  Preprocessing in a Tiered Sensor Network for Habitat Monitoring , 2003, EURASIP J. Adv. Signal Process..

[4]  Miodrag Potkonjak,et al.  Smart kindergarten: sensor-based wireless networks for smart developmental problem-solving environments , 2001, MobiCom '01.

[5]  Marvin V. Zelkowitz,et al.  Programming Languages: Design and Implementation , 1975 .

[6]  Gregory J. Pottie,et al.  Instrumenting the world with wireless sensor networks , 2001, 2001 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. Proceedings (Cat. No.01CH37221).

[7]  C. Guestrin,et al.  Near-optimal sensor placements: maximizing information while minimizing communication cost , 2006, 2006 5th International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks.

[8]  Sanjay Jha,et al.  A Communication Paradigm for Hybrid Sensor/Actuator Networks* , 2004, 2004 IEEE 15th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (IEEE Cat. No.04TH8754).

[9]  D. Rapport.  Stress response. , 1998, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[10]  Satoshi Sekiguchi,et al.  LANGUAGE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF , 1995 .

[11]  Mark D. Yarvis,et al.  Design and deployment of industrial sensor networks: experiences from a semiconductor plant and the north sea , 2005, SenSys '05.

[12]  Kirill Mechitov,et al.  High-Frequency Distributed Sensing for Structure Monitoring , 2004 .

[13]  Sanjay Jha,et al.  The design and evaluation of a hybrid sensor network for Cane-Toad monitoring , 2005 .

[14]  Peter I. Corke,et al.  Wireless sensor devices for animal tracking and control , 2004, 29th Annual IEEE International Conference on Local Computer Networks.

[15]  Robert Szewczyk,et al.  System architecture directions for networked sensors , 2000, ASPLOS IX.

[16]  Peter I. Corke,et al.  Transforming Agriculture through Pervasive Wireless Sensor Networks , 2007, IEEE Pervasive Computing.

[17]  J. Hellerstein,et al.  Data gathering tours in sensor networks , 2006, 2006 5th International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks.

[18]  David E. Culler,et al.  Taming the underlying challenges of reliable multihop routing in sensor networks , 2003, SenSys '03.

[19]  Rama Chellappa,et al.  Vehicle detection and tracking using acoustic and video sensors , 2004, 2004 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing.

[20]  Margaret Martonosi,et al.  Hardware design experiences in ZebraNet , 2004, SenSys '04.

[21]  Sandeep K. S. Gupta,et al.  Research challenges in wireless networks of biomedical sensors , 2001, MobiCom '01.

[22]  Gyula Simon,et al.  Multiple simultaneous acoustic source localization in urban terrain , 2005, IPSN 2005. Fourth International Symposium on Information Processing in Sensor Networks, 2005..

[23]  Matt Welsh,et al.  Deploying a wireless sensor network on an active volcano , 2006, IEEE Internet Computing.

[24]  Edoardo S. Biagioni,et al.  The Application of Remote Sensor Technology To Assist the Recovery of Rare and Endangered Species , 2002, Int. J. High Perform. Comput. Appl..

[25]  Anahí Gallardo Velázquez,et al.  Conference , 1969, Journal of Neuroscience Methods.

[26]  Peter I. Corke,et al.  Virtual fences for controlling cows , 2004, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2004. Proceedings. ICRA '04. 2004.

[27]  Alexander S. Szalay,et al.  Life Under Your Feet: A Wireless Soil Ecology Sensor Network , 2008 .

[28]  Dharma P. Agrawal,et al.  Introduction to Wireless and Mobile Systems , 2002 .

[29]  Kurt C. VerCauteren,et al.  TRAINING DEER TO AVOID SITES THROUGH NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT , 2003 .

[30]  Pavan Sikka,et al.  Results from the farm , 2006 .