Objective
Milk is an important nutrient globally: 6bn+ people worldwide consume milk and milk products. In Europe milk provides 11-14% of dietary fat supply. Today we already have 274m+ dairy cows, doubling their headcount to serve the global need for milk is not sustainable.
Health & well-being of cows are the main factors responsible for the difference in cow’s milk production. However, to improve the cattle health, the dairy farmer has to watch every single animal non-stop, 24x7, which means an unaffordable increase of at least 30% in labour costs. To address this challenge we have developed Ida, the world’s first dairy farmer’s assistant that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to learn the behaviour of cows & generate useful operational insights for the farmer.
on how to improve animals’ health & improve productivity.
Ida combines sensor technology, machine learning & cloud computing to translate raw data from the field into meaningful information that can be used to support decisions made by farmers every day. Unlike existing cow movement trackers that simply relay motion data to a central collection point, we have built Ida as a system that carries out intelligent pattern analysis.
By observing & learning how the cows behave, and by benchmarking the farm’s performance against the most efficient farms globally, Ida provides clear recommendations to the farmer.
In our feasibility assessment we have calculated that Ida will help farmers increase productivity per animal by 22%+.
We have first market traction: as of Jan 2018 Ida is already monitoring 2,000+ cows globally. With Ida in we are aiming at an annual market opportunity of at least €385m by 2023 from the overall €1.4bn global market for connected cows.
In this Phase 2 project we are requesting a €1.7m contribution to industrialize & trial Ida.
Fields of science
- agricultural sciencesanimal and dairy sciencedairy
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicsproduction economicsproductivity
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensors
- agricultural sciencesanimal and dairy sciencedomestic animalsanimal husbandry
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencemachine learning
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinator
1033 SE Amsterdam
Netherlands
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.