iPig: Towards Tracking the Behavior of Free-roaming Pigs

Many farmers and families in poor rural areas in the developing world keep pigs as a resource for income. Most of these pigs are not kept in stables but let to roam freely. While this enables poor farmers to keep livestock without vast investments and sets pigs free from stables, it also increases the transmission rate of infectious diseases among pigs and to humans. Currently, there is a lack of knowledge on free-roaming pigs' behavior. In particular, veterinarians are interested in correlations between pig behaviors and the presence of an infectious disease. In this paper, we present the iPig system, a wearable motion sensor to track the physical activity of pigs and a user interface to enable veterinarians to keep track of the activities of the pigs in a herd. The motion sensor inserted inside a pig's ear classifies its physical activities into 'walking', 'eating' and 'resting'. A daily report about pig activities is displayed to veterinarians over a user interface on a tablet device. Results of a first pilot study suggest that iPig could classify pig physical activities with an accuracy of up to 95.8%. We also discuss the rationale behind the wearable for pigs we designed following an animal-centered design methodology.