January 3, 2020

India agritech startup Mooofarm trials cattle facial recognition solution

Mooofarm's algorithm claims a 95% accuracy in differentiating each cattle and buffalo, which could be used in insurance claim settlements among other real world uses, reported Economic Times.

Mooofarm's project, currently trialled in some Punjab districts, uses machine learning to tell each cattle or buffalo apart. For the algorithm to work, it only requires several pictures of the cattle or buffalo from various backgrounds, angles and lightning. These are to determine the animal's unique features.

The startup was founded by Aashna and Param Singh in 2017 to find technical solutions for cattle farmers in helping keep their livestock healthy and improve their income through boosting dairy quality.

Current insurance claim methods in India require a livestock's death certificate from a veterinarian, the animals' RFID chip (located in its front left leg) and a post-mortem report. In addition, farmers must provide a chopped-off portion of the animal's ear which was punched with an ear tag. This contains a unique number stamped when the animal was purchased.

Aashna said Mooofarm's facial recognition solution will be able to replace current insurance claim methods. While two cattle may look alike from the naked eye, each animal has unique physical features, including their eyes and muzzle. Mooofarm's new solution can also organise cattle by age, breed and category.

The World Bank's Agriculture Insuretech Innovation Challenge awarded Mooofarm's project with a US$30,000 prize grant.

In addition, Mooofarm is working with Microsoft to help dairy farmers detect mastitis among their herd. The disease is a mammary gland infection on a cattle's udder, which leads to poor milk quality and could be fatal. Mastitis causes half a billion dollar losses annually for India's dairy industry.

Aashna said her company has won a grant to create a solution to detect mastitis using Microsoft technologies. The farmer will need to photograph the cow's udder and its produced milk, and Mooofarm's new image labelling technology will be able to detect if the cattle is infected with the disease.

-      Economic Times