In-depth processing and analysis of herd data
Optimise farm output
In 2015 following a life of living and working on a farm, StrongBo founder Micheal McInerney realised that it was necessary to try to allow farmers to have better control over their herds by providing up to date data on the performance of the individual animals and to use that data to tailor how each animal is cared for and reared to optimise the farm output. This started initially with looking at just animal weight but expanded into a wider engineering solution with the potential to reshape the methods of beef production.
Innovation Voucher Programme
The products developed by the company measure a no of significant parameters on individual animals in the herd. In order to fully maximise the potential of the product and the data generated, in-depth data analysis of the raw data was required to extract key figures and allow the herd owner to monitor the day to day progress of the animal and the herd as a whole. The developed algorithms needed to be compatible with existing software and hardware and allow the company to implement future revisions.
Through an interaction initially via the Rubicon centre in CIT the company approached CAPPA to assist with the problem. A significant volume of data is generated by the automated weighing system. The animals’ weight is measured each time it attends a trough for water. The work undertaken included an automated data cleaning algorithm. This was able to deal with scenarios such as where more than one animal was on the instrument generating values which were too large or where the animal only had three legs on the machine generating values which were too low. In addition to this interpolation was applied to deal with missing data. All data went through a time series smoothing model to evaluate the overall trend of each animal over time. This was then used to calculate the water consumed by each animal per day, predict the animals’ weight and to evaluate the growth rate of the animal at the resolution of a single day.
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Irish company
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automated data cleaning algorithm
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Innovation Voucher
“The research and data analysis carried out was incredibly valuable for our product development. The interaction with the group was very efficient and we were involved all the way. We would have no hesitation in recommending them as collaborators and look forward to working on more research projects with them.”
Micheál McInerney
CTO, StrongBo
“Working with CIT was one of the most beneficial things that we have done.”
Ivan Wahlrab
Co-Founder, StrongBo
StrongBo & CAPPA Technology Gateway partnership
The research carried out allowed StrongBo to manage a massive amount of data and keep our system live. The guys in CIT fulfilled a very critical part of our R&D. We would not have been able to do this without their level of expertise.