The immediate objective is to advance an available system for local positioning (see Methods) to reach sufficient accuracy (< 0.5 m) in a real-world barn environment or, at least, to understand under which circumstances this accuracy can be reached. Also, the software will be expanded to tracking several nodes (animals) simultaneously. This development stage will be the starting point for further commercial development in the way of a CTI project.
The ultimate objective of this project is to advance a local positioning system such that tracking animals in large groups of dry sows, dairy cattle (sheep, and goats) becomes feasible in order to study the impact of large group sizes on the welfare of these animals.