COMPUTER VISUAL TRACKING OF POULTRY

We introduce the wide area of problems that exist in the domain of ani mal ethology. We then develop a technique to solve one such problem us ing aspects of computer vision. The method processes a video sequence of broiler chickens in a group-housing pen. A new technique has been d eveloped for extracting a background image, which compensates for the particular idiosyncrasies inherent to the problem. A multi-faceted app roach to tracking has been demonstrated, and preliminary examination s hows the approach to be robust. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rig hts reserved.