Daniel Berckmans

• Ph D in BioScience Engineering, Master of Science in BioScience Engineering,
• Full Professor em & CTO BioRICS NV at KU Leuven

Introduction Stress among truck drivers is common. Interventions tailored to the organization’ and drivers’ needs are most effective. This study aims to (1) monitor metabolic energy use for mental tasks, and (2) explore associated factors and costs. Methods In a Belgian company, truck drivers’ mental energy use was monitored for 3 months using the...

The act of interacting with and showing affection to dogs, particularly through touch, has been shown to evoke positive physiological responses in humans, including the release of endorphins, oxytocin, and phenylethylamine (Odendaal & Lehman, 2000), coupled with a decrease in cortisol levels (Handlin et al. 2011). This positive feeling elicited by...

In the last decade, development of continuous sensor based monitoring systems for farm animals (Precision Livestock Farming (PLF)) has markedly increased with the aim to automate and improve disease detection. In calves, multiple technologies exist, but most detect only a single parameter, and none are available for continuous heart rate and electr...

Humans express feelings of love/a ection/care verbally/demonstratively via touching/holding/carry-ing/feeding/kissing/leaning into each other. However, human behaviours targeting dogs, expressing love/a ection, may cause stress in dogs, elicit calming signals, or even defensive/fearful/aggressive behaviour (e.g., bites/snap-ping). In the current st...

Human-, animal-and ecosystems health are interdependent. Recent climate change facilitates ticks questing in previously non-endemic areas and spreading tick-borne diseases (TBD) almost year-round, increasing risk for animals (livestock/pets/rodents etc.) grazing/playing/walking in long grass near undergrowth/tree trunks/stones and for humans, limit...

Integrating information on the subjective experience reported by workers operating in collaborative human-machine environments with objective data, collected with wearable sensors capable of monitoring participants’ physiological responses, may lead to novel findings regarding the recognition and handling of potentially stressful work situations. T...

CAIs (canine-assisted interventions) include ‘canine-assisted therapy’ in which a therapist sets client-oriented goals, 'canine-assisted activities' with recreational goals, and 'canine-assisted education/learning' in which teachers/coaches create learning goals for clients. Although most definitions of CAIs mention the involvement of a selected an...

Psychiatric illnesses are estimated to account for over 15% of the burden of disease, which is more than all kinds of cancer together. Since mental disease is often preceded by issues in emotion processing, a method to objectively measure emotions in daily life would be needed. The goal of this research is to investigate the possibilities of mental...

Sustainable production and development in livestock sectors are critical to meeting the growing requirements placed on it, increased production, efficiency and reduced labour , along with the various political declarations and societal claims. Digitalisation is increasingly seen as a prerequisite to achieving the goal of sustainable agriculture and...

The livestock sector, like other sectors, has a high environmental impact and we must find solutions to reduce it to accomplish the requirements for a more sustainable production system in line with the European Green Deal requirements. The aim of this paper is to show a case study in which it is evaluated the effect of PLF technology on the enviro...

n this chapter we give an overview of sound monitoring and the applications for different livestock applications (pigs, poultry, cattle) and perform a critical review on the status of the current technological developments.

CAIs (canine-assisted interventions) include “canine-assisted therapy” in which a therapist sets client-oriented goals, 'canine-assisted activities' with recreational goals for clients, and 'canine-assisted education/learning' in which teachers or coaches create learning goals for students or clients. CAIs vary in nearly every way; their only commo...

Purpose: The aim of this study was to identify the relationships between continuously measured internal and external load variables during volleyball competition. Methods: A total of 8 male elite volleyball athletes (Belgian Liga A and Liga B) were monitored during official competition matches. In total, 63 individual measurements are included i...

Simple Summary: Contactless physiological monitoring can be important for animal health and well-being. The current study investigated whether heart rate in pigs can be extracted automatically from videos without disturbing the pig and showed that this was possible with 4.69 beats per minute in mean absolute error. The study also tested different b...

Animal welfare remains a very important issue in the livestock sector, but monitoring animal welfare in an objective and continuous way remains a serious challenge. Monitoring animal welfare, based upon physiological measurements instead of the audio–visual scoring of behaviour, would be a step forward. One of the obvious physiological signals rela...

The chicken embryo is a widely used experimental animal-model in many studies such as developmental biology and to study the physiological responses and adaptation to altered environments as well as for cancer and neurobiology research. Embryonic heart rate is an important physiological variable useful as an index reflecting the embryo's natural ac...

Animal welfare remains a very important issue in the livestock sector but monitoring animal welfare in an objective and continuous way remains a serious challenge. Monitoring animal welfare based upon physiological measurements instead of audio-visual scoring of behaviour would be a step forward. One of the obvious physiological signals related to...

Measuring the ventilation rate is crucial to ensuring the control of thermal comfort, energy saving, and emission of pollutants in greenhouses and animal houses. This is more difficult in naturally ventilated (NV) buildings because of the dynamic and complex air flow patterns caused by wind and buoyancy effects. In this study, a user-friendly compu...

For all homoeothermic living organisms, heart rate (HR) is a core variable to control the metabolic energy production in the body, which is crucial to realize essential bodily functions. Consequently, HR monitoring is becoming increasingly important in research of farm animals, not only for production efficiency, but also for animal welfare. Real-t...

Surface temperature variation in a broiler's head can be used as an indicator of its health status. Surface temperatures in the existing thermograph based animal health assessment studies were mostly obtained manually. 2185 thermal images, each of which had an individual broiler, were captured from 20 broilers. Where 15 broilers served as the exper...

The main objective of any bioenvironmental controller is to create favourable bioenvironmental conditions around the living-system. In industrial incubation practice of chicken embryo, it is sometimes difficult to fill large incubators with uniform eggs, which leads to suboptimal results. The ideal incubation solution is a machine that is capable o...

Economic pressures continue to mount on modern-day livestock farmers, forcing them to increase herds sizes in order to be commercially viable. The natural consequence of this is to drive the farmer and the animal further apart. However, closer attention to the animal not only positively impacts animal welfare and health but can also increase the ca...

Lameness is an important economic problem in the dairy sector, resulting in production loss and reduced welfare of dairy cows. Given the modern-day expansion of dairy herds, a tool to automatically detect lameness in real-time can therefore create added value for the farmer. The challenge in developing camera-based tools is that one system has to w...

Precision feeding is a promising technique to achieve better feed efficiencies for livestock and realise production results closer to the genetic potential of the animal. Continuous and automatic monitoring of growth of individual finishing pigs is an essential element of a precision feeding system. For optimal pig growth, the feed nutrients need t...

Pigs reared in intensive farming systems are more likely to develop damaging behaviours such as tail and ear biting (EB) due to their difficulty in coping with the environment and their inability to perform natural behaviours. However, much less is known about the aetiology of EB behaviour compared to tail biting behaviour. Application of new inter...

Cycling may induce urogenital problems in men and women. This research aimed at investigating the effects of chamois design on seat pressure distribution during cycling. Maximum seat pressures were quantified for nine male test persons using three different chamois designs (thick, thin and no chamois) using a pressure mat. The effects of chamois de...

Ear bases are considered the thermal windows of a piglet. Temperature variation in piglet ear bases can be used as the indicator of a piglet’s health status. However, piglet skin temperatures in thermal windows in the existing research are obtained manually from infrared thermal images captured by a thermography. This has put an obstacle at the aut...

This 273-paged book outlines a number of the key dilemmas in animal welfare for today's, and tomorrow's, world. The issues discussed range from the welfare of hunted animals, to debates around intensive farming versus sustainability, and the effects of climate and environmental change. It explores the effects of fences on wild animals and human imp...

Continuous live weight and carcass traits estimation are important for the pig production and breeding industry. It is widely known that top-view images of a pig’s body (excluding its head and neck) reveal surface dimension parameters, which are correlated with live weight and carcass traits. However, because a pig is not constrained when an image...

Continuous live weight and carcass traits estimation are important for the pig production and breeding industry. It is widely known that top-view images of a pig’s body (excluding its head and neck) reveal surface dimension parameters, which are correlated with live weight and carcass traits. However, because a pig is not constrained when an image...

The interaction of physical and mental vulnerability and environmental constraints is thought to foster the development of psychiatric disorders such as major depressive disorder (MDD). A central factor in the development of psychopathology is mental stress. Despite some evidence for parasympathetic withdrawal and sympathetic overactivity in MDD, t...

Introduction: In an ageing population, increasing chronic disease prevalence puts a high economic burden on society. Physical activity plays an important role in disease prevention and should therefore be promoted in the elderly. Methods: In this study, a mobile health (mHealth) system was implemented in a care home setting to monitor and promot...

In calf rearing, bovine respiratory disease (BRD) is a major animal health challenge. Farmers incur severe economic losses due to BRD. Additional to economic costs, outbreaks of BRD impair the welfare of the animal and extra expertise and labour are needed to treat and care for the infected animals. Coughing is recognised as a clinical manifestatio...

Broiler activity and occupation patterns are of special interest to farmers during visual inspection. However, this is time consuming and precision livestock farming (PLF) technologies can enable the monitoring of such key flock behavioural indicators in a continuous and automated way in the house. The aim is to show how the welfare status of the p...

Leg deformities and lameness are a major welfare concern in the European poultry industry. This study was focused on the development of a prediction model for gait score in broilers, based on automated measures for flock distribution, bird activity levels and body mass. Data were gathered in five different farms in Europe. Broiler gait was assessed...

Automatic animal monitoring through Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) tools is a method to support farmers in achieving farm sustainability. The development of PLF systems requires close interdisciplinary collaboration between sector experts, farmers, animal scientists and bio-engineers. Labelling is a key activity in the development of reliable al...

Aquaculture production of finfish has seen rapid growth in production volume and economic yield over the last decades, and is today a key provider of seafood. As the scale of production increases, so does the likelihood that the industry will face emerging biological, economic and social challenges that may influence the ability to maintain ethical...

Mounted police horses and riders are repeatedly subjected to demanding and stressful situations. Intensive selection and training of police horses is required to ensure performance, safety and welfare of the horses and their riders. At the mounted police in Brussels, Belgium, the selection of police horses is mainly based on intuition built upon pr...

The pattern of body weight gain during the commercial growing of broiler chickens is important to understand growth and feed conversion ratio of each flock. The application of sound analysis techniques has been widely studied to measure and analyze the amplitude and frequency of animal sounds. Previous studies have shown a significant correlation (...

© 2017 European Conference on Precision Livestock Farming. All rights reserved. In today's broiler houses, birds are reared in large groups, with up to 50,000 often together in one house. Supervising all these animals is difficult or even impossible for the farmer. Sensors like microphones can help the farmer by continuously monitoring the producti...

Leg deformities and lameness cause a major welfare concern in the European poultry industry. In this study, the aim was focused on the relation between bird activity, measured from camera images, and broiler gait score. Within the EUPLF-project, broiler gait was manually assessed on a discrete [0-5]-scale according to the Welfare Quality Protocol b...

The objective of this study was to evaluate the system performance of a 3D vision system for automatic locomotion monitoring implemented in a commercial dairy farm. Data were gathered during 633 milking sessions on a Belgian commercial dairy farm. After milking, the cows walked in a single-lane alley where the video recording system with a 3D depth...

This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of a 12-h light, 12-h dark (12L : 12D) photoperiod of green light during day 1 to day 18 of incubation time, on embryo growth, hormone concentration and the hatch process. In the test group, monochromatic light was provided by a total of 204 green light-emitting diodes (522 nm) mounted in a frame whic...

Most farmers do not have the skills and time to utilize new Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) technologies effectively. It is time consuming to combine and analyse the data coming from sensors in different formats and frequencies. As part of the EU-PLF project, the authors have developed a visualisation tool to bring together and analyse the scatte...

Three sources of sensory data: cow's individual rumination duration, activity and milk yield were evaluated as possible indicators for clinical diagnosis, focusing on post-calving health problems such as ketosis and metritis. Data were collected from a computerised dairy-management system on a commercial dairy farm with Israeli Holstein cows. In th...

The objective of this study was to design and validate a mathematical model to detect post-calving ketosis. The validation was conducted in four commercial dairy farms in Israel, on a total of 706 multiparous Holstein dairy cows: 203 cows clinically diagnosed with ketosis and 503 healthy cows. A logistic binary regression model was developed, where...

It is difficult to make a distinction between inflammation and infection. Therefore, new strategies are required to allow accurate detection of infection. Here, we hypothesize that we can distinguish infected from non-infected ICU patients based on dynamic features of serum cytokine concentrations and heart rate time series. Serum cytokine profiles...

Footpad dermatitis and lameness are a major welfare concern in broiler chicken farming. In general, footpad lesions are linked to poor environmental conditions. Ulcers that arise from advanced lesions can negatively affect the gait of the birds, with effects on the animal welfare, including, in the worst cases, inability to reach the feed or water....

The possibility of using automatic recordings of broiler chicken activity in commercial flocks to assess the birds΄ walking ability (lameness) was investigated. Data were collected from 5 commercial broiler farms in 4 European countries, using 16 flocks and 33 assessment occasions. Lameness was assessed using established gait scoring methods (Kesti...

Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) could assist livestock producers through automated, continuous monitoring of the animals. The observation data can be translated into key indicators on animal welfare, animal health, productivity and environmental impact. A number of PLF tools have been developed at laboratory levels and as prototypes. The overall...

Dairy cows stay longer in production when compared with any other farmed animals. Moreover, each animal unit is of a high economical value to the farmer. Therefore, for the dairy cow and, consequently, for the farmer, it is important to detect problems as soon as possible and to take action on an individual animal level. Precision livestock farming...

Many people in several countries worldwide, particularly in Asia, India, and South America, are getting more financial possibilities to buy animal protein. This fact, combined with the changing diets of these people in those countries, will result in an increase of the worldwide demand for animal products (meat, eggs, and milk) of 70% by 2050. Cons...

The objective was to develop a camera based monitoring system of the farrowing process in sows. The system, when used in practical farm conditions, should support the farm staff in reducing the problems of mortality in piglets due to perinatal asphyxia and crushing. The experiments took place in the research farm of the University of Veterinary Med...

Bovine respiratory disease (BRD) complex in calves impairs health and welfare and causes severe economic losses for the Stockperson. Early recognition of BRD should lead to earlier veterinary (antibiotic/anti-inflammatory) treatment interventions thereby reducing the severity of the disease and associated costs. Coughing is one of the clinical mani...

This case study demonstrates the economic value of using an early-warning tool to detect respiratory diseases on a commercial pig fattening farm. The early-warning tool used is the SOMO® respiratory distress monitor developed by SoundTalks NV, which automatically and continuously calculates a respiratory distress index and raises an alarm when resp...

Early detection of post-calving health problems is critical for dairy operations. Separating sick cows from the herd is important, especially in robotic-milking dairy farms, where searching for a sick cow can disturb the other cows’ routine. The objectives of this study were to develop and apply a behaviour- and performance-based health-detection m...

The present invention relates to a system and method for monitoring in real time the nutriment intake (feed and/or water) of farm animals, including but not limited to poultry, turkeys, pigs and cows, based on the measurement and iden- tification of the nutriment uptake sounds and/or the working of the nutriment supply system, while the presence an...

This paper describes a novel monitoring system to accurately detect the short-term feeding behaviours (meal size, meal duration, meals per day and feeding rate) of broiler chickens at group level by a real-time sound processing technology. In this research, the pecking sounds of 10 male, 39days old, broiler chickens were recorded by a microphone th...

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is one of the most common respiratory diseases and a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. It is characterized by irreversible airflow limitations. We aimed to explore whether the dynamics of expiration could serve as a descriptor of airflow limitations. Additionally, we explored the relationship bet...

The objective of the study was to test the effectiveness of classification, on the basis of accelerometer data, of nest-building behaviour in farrowing sows that are not confined in crates. The experiment took place in the research farm of University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, using a herd of 120 Edelschwein sows. Data were collected from 9 sow...

Small wireless trunk accelerometers have become a popular approach to unobtrusively quantify human locomotion and provide insights into both gait rehabilitation and sports performance. However, limited evidence exists as to which trunk accelerometry measures are suitable for the purpose of detecting movement compensations while running, and specifi...

The shape of specific resistance loops is affected by central or peripheral airway obstruction, expiratory collapse and end-expiratory “closing”. However the diagnostic power of these loops is reduced to its slope rather than its differences in shape. We aimed to develop different parameters reflecting the shape of the loop and explored whether the...

There is a growing global awareness of welfare conditions in animal production and a tendency towards more intensive production, often perceived to have lower welfare conditions, resulting in a need for more precise monitoring. Monitoring methods based on image and sound analysis are interesting for the farmers and other stakeholders to potentially...

Footpad dermatitis (FPD) and hock burn (HB) are a major welfare concern in broiler chicken farming. In general, foot lesions are linked to poor environmental conditions. Ulcers caused by advanced lesions can negatively affect the gait of the birds, with effects on the welfare of animals, including, in the worst cases, inability to reach the feed or...

Poultry is one of the lowest cost sources of animal protein in the world and, more than 40 billion chickens are produced every year globally. For reasons of public concern and due to the large number of animals involved, it is considered by many people to be important to take care of the welfare and health status of the chickens reared under intens...

The aim of the overall study was to evaluate the potential for using automatic measurements of distribution and activity and to investigate whether this method can be used to assess the human-animal relationship in broiler flocks. A good relationship between the stockman and his/her animals has been proven to have a positive effect on production an...

The objective of this study was to evaluate if a multi-sensor system (milk, activity, body posture) was a better classifier for lameness than the single-sensor-based detection models. Between September 2013 and August 2014, 3629 cow observations were collected on a commercial dairy farm in Belgium. Human locomotion scoring was used as reference for...

Monitoring and controlling some behavioural responses such as the activity level and position of broiler chickens in broiler houses could provide an inexpensive tool with the potential to improve broiler welfare, health, energy consumption and product quality. The main objective of this paper is to examine the possibility of controlling chickens' a...

The purpose of this study was to investigate if trunk accelerometry measures were influenced by outdoor surface while running. A sample of highly-trained (n=12) and recreational (n=17) ran on three independent surfaces, namely asphalt, synthetic track, and wood-chip. Dependent accelerometry measures were step frequency (S FREQ), step symmetry (S SY...

This paper extends existing research on the feed intake of broiler chickens and describes an advanced monitoring system to accurately measure the feed intake of broilers at group level by a real-time sound processing technology. In this research, the pecking sounds of 10 male, 39-day-old, broiler chickens were recorded by a microphone that was atta...