Smart Computing and Sensing Technologies for Animal Welfare: A Systematic Review

TL;DR

This systematic review explores how smart computing and sensing technologies are used across various animal contexts to assess and improve animal welfare, aiming to guide future research and policy development.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive survey of existing interconnected sensing and computing systems applied to domestic, farm, and wild animals for welfare assessment.

Findings

Technologies enable remote health and behavior monitoring of animals.

Smart systems support humane farming and conservation efforts.

The review highlights gaps and future directions in animal welfare tech.

Abstract

Animals play a profoundly important and intricate role in our lives today. Dogs have been human companions for thousands of years, but they now work closely with us to assist the disabled, and in combat and search and rescue situations. Farm animals are a critical part of the global food supply chain, and there is increasing consumer interest in organically fed and humanely raised livestock, and how it impacts our health and environmental footprint. Wild animals are threatened with extinction by human induced factors, and shrinking and compromised habitat. This review sets the goal to systematically survey the existing literature in smart computing and sensing technologies for domestic, farm and wild animal welfare. We use the notion of \emph{animal welfare} in broad terms, to review the technologies for assessing whether animals are healthy, free of pain and suffering, and also positively stimulated in their environment. Also the notion of \emph{smart computing and sensing} is used in broad terms, to refer to computing and sensing systems that are not isolated but interconnected with communication networks, and capable of remote data collection, processing, exchange and analysis. We review smart technologies for domestic animals, indoor and outdoor animal farming, as well as animals in the wild and zoos. The findings of this review are expected to motivate future research and contribute to data, information and communication management as well as policy for animal welfare.