M3SEN has developed an AI-based technology that will boost productivity of the pig farming industry. It plans to target the global smart farm market along with the South Korean branch of Cargill which is the top company in the global agriculture and stockbreeding industry.
The South Korean company announced on Sunday that it has launched ‘Deep Eyes’ solution that is applied with AI technology based on deep learning in order to provide unmanned supervision for adult female pigs.
In order to raise productivity, it is important to watch for different problems that can arise in pig farms and take immediate actions in the pig farming industry. Not taking actions at the right time due to lack of manpower or poor management happen frequently. There are also many cases where piglets die due to suffocation from difficult delivery or delay in handling of amniotic fluid.
M3SEN’s Deep Eyes solution has cameras that observe adult female pigs in real time throughout the day installed and analyze large amount of data collected from these cameras at the same time. It prevents different issues such as delivery by adult female pigs, stillbirth due to delay in delivery or difficult delivery, suffocation due to fetal membrane or delay in handling of amniotic fluid or decline in survival rate of piglets due to reduction in colostrum’s effect from happening beforehand.
Because the solution notifies people who are in charge of pig farms through different ways such as alarm system or mobile device, it raises survival rate of piglets. The solution also monitors health status of adult female pigs and environment (temperature and humidity) of pigpens. By establishing big data, it creates a system that accurately understands current situation of management of adult female pigs and takes necessary actions towards problems.
Although various pig farming management technologies had been developed in the past, it has been difficult to understand and differentiate data in real time when hundreds of pigs move around in a small pen. The Deep Eyes solution solves the problem through machine learning technology that can accurately distinguish images by learning enormous amount of data in addition to high-resolution 3D camera technology that is capable of taking 3D images, 3D LiDAR (light detection and ranging), and laser displacement measurement technology that can accurately measure distance.
“By improving MSY (maximum sustainable yield) by two pigs, average profit of about 4,000 pig raising farms in South Korea will increase by $110,000 (120 million KRW).” said CEO Seo Man-hyung of M3SEN. “Deep Eyes Solution can improve productivity and offset rising production cost that includes feed expense and personnel expenses.”
The global pig farming market is estimated at $160 billion (180 trillion KRW). China has been building huge pig farming plants and investing in smart farm management. Pig farming markets in the United States and South-East Asia are also focusing on raising productivity through smart farm technologies.
M3SEN has partnered up with Cargill Agri Purina, which is the South Korean branch of Cargill, in order to enter pig farming markets in Vietnam, U.S., and China.
“The Deep Eyes solution is currently being used by farms in Pocheon and Cheonan.” said CEO Kim. “We expect that the solution will be utilized for about 700,000 pigs by the end of this year.” Kim also added that PoC (proof of concept) projects are also taking place in China and that his company will look to export the solution based on Cargill’s global network.
Staff Reporter Kim, Jiseon | river@etnews.com