US poultry researchers develop AI to analyse broiler activity index
Broiler activity can be quantified as activity index
31 January 2025
1 minute read
By: USPOULTRY and the USPOULTRY Foundation recently announced the completion of a funded research project by researchers from the University of Georgia that worked to develop a web-based artificial intelligence system to analyse broiler activity index.
The research is part of the Association’s comprehensive research program encompassing all phases of poultry and egg production and processing. A summary of the completed project is below.
Broiler activities, such as locomotion and movement, can be quantified as activity index. The activity index has been associated with leg health, productivity and physical conditions of broilers.
However, the indicator requires engineering knowledge to adjust image processing parameters, segment individual broilers, select calculation areas and normalise variations to obtain consistent values.
This project developed a user-friendly platform to calculate the broiler activity index, either individually or in groups, from videos.
The open-source user-friendly platform allows researchers to interact with software tools to understand animal behaviour patterns and welfare without needing extensive programming knowledge.
The research summary can be found on the USPOULTRY website. Guoming Li, from the Department of Poultry Science at the University of Georgia is the project lead.
