Lofty Matters

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U.S. researchers recently developed a headset for cows which will enable them to ‘whisper wireless commands to cows to control their movements across a landscape — and even remotely gather them into a corral.’ It could also help farmers maintain cows behind virtual fences. The circuit board contains a processor, data storage, WiFi for remote communication, audio and electrical stimulation electronics, a GPS receiver, and sensors that record the body orientation and configuration of the animal.

This is a grazing cross-bred beef cow wearing a directional virtual fencing battery with a powered neck saddle device equipped with spring loaded electrodes for providing electrical stimulation and piezo speakers inside poly vinyl chloride pipe for audio stimulation. A global positioning system antenna is located in the middle of a panel of solar cells. This looks somewhat clumsy but performed very well during numerous field trials conducted between 2001 and 2005.

The Directional Virtual Fencing (DVF) gives cows ‘left’ and ‘right’ sensory signals to cause them to move away from an irritating suite of cues. The commands vary from familiar ‘gathering songs’ sung by cowboys during manual round-ups to irritating sounds such as sirens and even mild electric stimulation to get cows to move away from forbidden boundaries.

Virtual fencing is a way to control animals without actual fencing. The control is maintained by altering an animal’s behavior through sensory cues given to the animal when it tries to penetrate an electronically-generated boundary. This boundary can be any shape and is invisible but is detected by a computer system worn by the animal.

These techniques will be useful for controlling a many different biological groups, including cows, bird flocking, insect swarming, and even human crowds. These tools would allow the monitoring of groups of people to alleviate foot traffic congestion or to identify certain behaviors.

Sources: USDA/Agricultural Research Service News, June 6, 2008