Thesis subject

What are the roles of virtual and augmented reality in Livestock farming?

Digital twins can be used within a virtual reality environment to simulate, for instance, a dairy farm. Similarly, augmented reality can be used to provide a farmer rich information within the stall. In order to construct the digital twins diverse data from actual farms are required. The required data may include images from farm and data from sensors and farm management systems. The question that arises here are the following. How are virtual and augmented reality are used in practice so far? How can we build a virtual reality of a given farm given a generic VR model? How can the VR model be used in practice? In this research the a mixed reality environment will be used.

Digital twins are digital (also called virtual) clones of physical objects, which can be devices or natural objects (such as animals), that can be digitally represented in management or simulation environment. Digital twins can allow designers of the objects (for instance a farm) to simulate various scenarios before the objects are actually made. They can also be used as part of the farm management system as the image above shows.


    Objectives

    1. Expanding the state-of-the-art for using data in game engine technology to detect movement of animals
    2. Using data to construct a digital twin in a game engine technology (e.g ZappWorks, Unity, Unreal) to model the situation in near to real-time

      Literature

      • Jo, Seng-Kyoun, Dae-Heon Park, Hyeon Park, and Se-Han Kim. "Smart livestock farms using digital twin: Feasibility study." In 2018 International Conference on Information and Communication Technology Convergence (ICTC), pp. 1461-1463. IEEE, 2018.
      • Ciano, Maria Pia, Rossella Pozzi, Tommaso Rossi, and Fernanda Strozzi. "Digital twin-enabled smart industrial systems: a bibliometric review." International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing (2020): 1-19.


      Requirements (optional)

        Theme(s): VR for Farm Management, Farm simulation and management, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Livestock Farming

        Contact person(s)

        Will Hurst (will.hurst@wur.nl)
        Ayalew Kassahun (ayalew.kassahun@wur.nl)