CSIRO develops smart imaging system for wool growers
CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, has been working on a system to seamlessly assess the weight of a sheep and its fleece, otherwise known as its liveweight. The two-year project was funded by Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) and Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) and led to the development of Flockmate.
Current systems to assess liveweight are said to rely on manual handling or individually weighing each sheep. Flockmate operates in the animal’s environment and captures high-resolution 3D images of each individual animal as it comes into view of the sensors. “Advanced AI and computer vision algorithms then analyse these data to generate estimates of body volume, liveweight and fleece weight, with each measurement automatically associated with the animal’s Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tag,” explained Dr Xun Li, CSIRO’s quantitative imaging team leader.
He added that “this enables frequent, non-invasive monitoring without interrupting normal farm operations”. The system was tested at CSIRO’s Chiswick Research Station in New South Wales, which has some 2,700 breeding merino ewes.
Flockmate is being introduced at LambEx 2026 at the Adelaide Convention Centre, South Australia today and tomorrow.
Photo Flockmate at work, courtesy of CSIRO
