LIVEMOS-G: A High Throughput Gantry Monitoring System with Multi-Source Imaging and Environmental Sensing for Large-Scale Commercial Rabbit Farming
The rising global demand for high-quality animal protein has driven the development of advanced technologies in high-density livestock farming. Rabbits, with their rapid growth, high reproductive efficiency, and excellent feed conversion, play an important role in modern animal agriculture. However, large-scale rabbit farming poses challenges in timely health inspection and environmental monitoring. Traditional manual inspections are labor-intensive, prone-to-error, and inefficient for real-time management. To address these issues, we propose Livestock Environmental Monitoring System-Gantry (LIVEMOS-G), an intelligent gantry-based monitoring system tailored for large-scale rabbit farms. Inspired by plant phenotyping platforms, the system integrates a three-axis motion module with multi-source imaging (RGB, depth, near-infrared, thermal infrared) and an environmental sensing module. It autonomously inspects around the farm, capturing multi-angle, high-resolution images and real-time environmental data without disturbing the rabbits. Key environmental parameters are collected accurately and compared with welfare standards. After training on an original dataset, which contains a total of 2325 sets of images (each set includes RGB, NIR, TIR, and depth image), the system is able to detect dead rabbits using a fusion-based object detection model during inspections. LIVEMOS-G offers a scalable, non-intrusive solution for intelligent livestock inspection, contributing to enhanced biosecurity, animal welfare, and data-driven management in high-density, modern rabbit farms. It also shows the potential to be extended to other species, contributing to the sustainable development of the animal farming industry as a whole.
Authors
- Congyan Li
- Liangde Kuang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-1451-1011)
- Yutong Han (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3726-6315)
- Xiuli Mei
- Z. H. Chen
- Hongying Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2052-8171)
- Jianjun Gong (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9894-4971)
- Liangju Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6936-6145)
- Tai Wei (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9629-0158)
Institutions
- Sichuan Animal Science Academy (CN)
- China Agricultural University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Animals
- Published
- 2025-10-31
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3390/ani15213177
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Rabbits: Nutrition, Reproduction, Health
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 1.19