One Data Scientist, one Nutritionist, one Food Technician, one Physicist, and one Veterinarian sitting together. Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke …not necessarily!
This is the Afimilk Research Team, a small group of people coming from different disciplines working together, trying to speak the same language, and developing the future of Afimilk.
What are we dealing with? All the good stuff! Looking for and learning about new technologies for future sensors, improving our current measurements and capabilities, creating more information from Afimilk data, and developing new applications for our users.
In the last two years the team’s efforts were directed towards three areas:
1. AfiCollar. Improving the collar’s performance with the detection of rumination and eating, extending capabilities, and exploring new features. A new application resulting from this activity that is easy to spot is the new Heat stress group that was added to the recently released AfiFarm 5.5 version. There are new surprises for cow monitoring just around the corner. But let’s keep something for future newsletters.
2. Nutrition. With the addition of Dr. Roni Yair to the research team almost 3 years ago, we dove into the area of dairy cow nutrition, developing new capabilities and knowledge we dreamed about for many years.We are exploring ways for improving feed efficiency and impacting the dairy farm profitability.
3. Data Mining and Artificial Intelligence. Big words but even bigger is the potential for Afimilk with its rich global database. We relocated to the cloud, and disseminated machine learning disciplines in Afimilk.
Afik Shaham joined the group to help us to continue and expand our expertise and know-how in this exciting and endless field. Soon you shall meet the Crystal Ball, a new cloud application, driven by this research.
We would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you and good luck to Drorit Rak, Shlomit Lavie, and Douglas Macdonald who were part of the Afimilk Research Team family for many years and continued on to their next adventures. Thank you!!!
Alon Arazi, Chief Vet
