Radar-based Evaluation of Lameness Detection in Ruminants: Preliminary Results

This paper presents preliminary results on using radar systems and micro-Doppler signatures to evaluate lameness in ruminants. Lameness is regarded as a major welfare and economic problem for animals such as cattle and sheep. As evaluation methods are typically based on timeconsuming, subjective scoring by trained veterinary clinicians, there is scope for automatic methods that can improve repeatability and reliability. Our initial results on a relatively large sample of 51 dairy cows and 75 sheep show promising performance, with accuracy above 80% for cows and above 90% for sheep in the most favorable cases.