A
two year research position in a project with a clear intention to
complete a PhD at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven within four years.
Further Information
Application Deadline : 31 March 2012
Title
Development of a health and welfare monitor for pigs based on image and sound analysis
Project description and tasks
Measuring
of animal-based variables can substantially contribute to health and
welfare objectives that have been set by EU-legislation. Automated
recording and processing of animal-based variables has a number of
advantages. Important information about animal behaviour related to
health and welfare such as sound can be measured automatically and
consequently these measurements can be used in a real time detection of
animal health and welfare problems.
This
project aims at the development of a health and welfare monitor for
pigs based on automatic detection of visual-auditive welfare related
behaviour parameters. Vision and sound algorithms shall be used and
further developed to calculate a limited number of characteristic
parameters, such as animal position and movement, as well as sound
intensity, duration and location. The dynamic variation of these
parameters shall be related to specific behaviours, such as eating,
drinking, resting, locomotion, social behaviour and sickness. The
project includes also the detection and removal of background noise
events in the recorded signals and aims at using information on the
actual acoustic environment to improve the identification and detection
accuracy.
Within
this project, the candidate shall focus on the recording and analysis
of sound information. The candidate will work in close collaboration
with a PhD student, who focuses on the recording and analysis of image
based data. The results of both, vision and sound oriented approaches,
shall be combined and lead to the development of algorithms to
automatically detect health and welfare problems in pig production.
The
research will be conducted in a joint effort between the KU Leuven
divisions M3-BIORES of the Faculty of Bio-Engineering and division PMA
of the Faculty of Engineering. The work fits within a collaborative
project with Ghent University.
Candidate profile
The
candidate must have a master’s or equivalent degree in (bio,
agricultural-) engineering (electrical, computer, civil, etc.), physics,
mathematics or other relevant field.
The
candidate should be willing to obtain a PhD degree in the field of
bio-engineering. Reporting the project results in international peer
reviewed journals is a major task.
The candidate must be able to speak and write English.
Working knowledge of MATLAB, experiences in sound analysis and/ or mathematical modelling is requested.
Contact
For
more information and application instructions, the candidates are
requested to send a CV to Dr. Vasileios Exadaktylos, Division M3-BIORES,
Faculty of Bio-Engineering, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Tel.
+32-16-32.17.30, email. m3-biores.jobs@biw.kuleuven.be
Application Deadline : 31 March 2012
