Connected Cows project ranked among the top 10 projects in the IEEE ComSoc Student Competition 2018

Pictured are Dr. Eyal Misha, John Byabazaire and Mohit Taneja. Picture: Patrick Browne
IEEE ComSoc Student competition is an annual competition organized by IEEE ComSoc. This, the 6th edition of the competition (“Communications Technology Changing the World”) saw students from around the world compete to be crowned the winner. The competition looks to recognize students or teams of students who demonstrate the capacity to improve the lives of people, through the application of communication technology and the development of projects that meet the human needs of people.
The Connected Cows project entered by the TSSG students was ranked among the top 10 projects in the competition and as a result received an “Honorary Mention” certificate.
We asked Mohit Taneja, PhD Researcher at TSSG / CONNECT who is the team lead on the Connected Cows Project what the project was all about, “The project presents a fog computing assisted system for animal behaviour analysis and health monitoring in a dairy farming scenario. The solution aims towards keeping track of the animals” well-being by delivering early warning alerts generated through data analytics methods implemented on data obtained from sensors on cow’s legs. The system supports the farmer in monitoring the health of their livestock and is able to identify potential diseases at an early stage, thereby also helping in increasing milk yield and productivity. The project specializes in detecting lameness in dairy cattle at an early stage i.e. before the visual signs of it appears to be seen by farmer or an animal expert.
He went on to say, ‘The farmer works hard from 5am till late in the evening– milking, feeding and maintaining the farm; so, it is a challenge to monitor the wellbeing of hundreds of cows in the dairy farm in real time. Moreover as the size and scale of the farm increases, it becomes difficult for the farmer to keep track of the health of each single cow in the herd. Along with working hard the farmers have added pressure of keeping up the milk quota (i.e. milk production) for their local contribution which ultimately adds up to country’s milk production capacity or targeted annual milk quota. Could technology help?  And that’s where we come in. In this tech savvy and data driven era it’s easier to manage and see the health of the whole herd on a mobile phone’.
Well done to all the team involved:
Title of the submission made: Connected Cows- Fog Assistance Towards Data Driven Smart Dairy Farming
Team Leader: Mohit Taneja
Team: Mohit Taneja, Nikita Jalodia, John Byabazaire, Alan Davy, Cristian Olariu
Advisor/Mentors:  Dr. Alan Davy (TSSG,WIT); Dr. Cristian Olariu (IBM Ireland)
(Web-link listing winners and honorary mentions  for IEEE ComSoc Student Competition 2018)
https://www.comsoc.org/education-training/student-competition/student-competition-winners]]>