Techlines Today

Moo Cow Pseudo Facial Recognition

By Adam Myers ⋅ June 16, 2008 ⋅ Tags: cows, facial recognition

Please don’t read into the sudden infatuation with bovine technology. It’s just that it sound so preposterous that it deserves to be passed on to the masses. I do suppose that as technology becomes more and more fundamental in our daily routines, these types of applications are inevitable. Nonetheless,

Australian scientists have launched technology that uses video cameras to

differentiate between species. They say the “cowcam” will keep unwanted animals out of remote watering and feed points in the Australian outback and allow farmers to monitor their stock from home or office.

“We use the unique side profile that every animal has and a software program similar to facial recognition technology that allows us to identify animals to a species level,” said Neal Finch, the joint inventor of the product.

“The camera can tell the difference between sheep and cattle and feral pests such as goats, horses, pigs, kangaroos, camels and emus.”

For about $9,600 you get a lane that narrows the animals down to single file so they go through one at a time in front of the camera, the computing hardware, an electronic gate, weatherproof boxes and all the solar energy apparatus to run the system.

Seems cheap enough to catch on in my mind!

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