Cow glasses from the Chamber of Agriculture win digitalisation prize

The virtual reality cow goggles invented by Benito Weise, an employee at the Agricultural Training Centre of the Lower Saxony Chamber of Agriculture (LWK) in Echem, were awarded second place in the Lower Saxony Agriculture and Food Digitisation Prize this Thursday, 1 October, with prize money of 3,500 euros.

As the saying goes? One cow makes moo many cows make trouble. Before the age of virtual reality, it was difficult to imagine what the world looked like from a cow's perspective. Since the so-called cow goggles from Lower Saxony have been available, it's now very easy. Now the project, which we announced in May last year presented have won a prize.

Understanding cows better

The cow groove enables users to see in the moment, to visually perceive their current surroundings like a cow. "We can only see the world we live in," explains Martina Weber, Managing Director of the Agricultural Training Centre (LBZ), the LWK's training and further education centre for animal husbandry, "but the animals perceive this world in a completely different way.

The cow glasses provide an incredible aha effect. For example, when the cow steps outside from the barn - and stops for a few seconds and doesn't want to go any further. This is because adaptation, i.e. the adjustment of the eyes to the brightness, takes much longer for animals than for us humans. "Our course participants, who have experienced this feeling of temporary blindness themselves, gain a much greater understanding of a cow's behaviour," reports Martina Weber.

How it all began

Benito Weise, who coordinates inter-company training at the LBZ and has 20 years of professional experience in training and further education, has focussed in particular on the topic of animal welfare in recent years. He was looking for new didactic approaches that would allow livestock farmers a somewhat more emotional approach to the animal. He was fascinated by the topic of a cow's field of vision because he realised that if you are not familiar with it, stressful and even dangerous situations can arise. At the beginning of 2016, more and more VR goggles and associated games came onto the market. Benito Weise thought: "It would be great to have a camera that captures the field of vision and technology that converts it in real time..." The idea for the cow goggles was born.

This was followed by a study of the literature, as Weise calls it, to find out what technology was already available on the market at the time. In November 2016, the agricultural engineering graduate knew that his idea was technically feasible - but he was not aware of any camera that was capable of doing so. At an international optics trade fair for camera systems in Stuttgart, where he asked around, the 49-year-old realised that as soon as the trade fair exhibitors realised that his project would not generate particularly high sales, they lost interest. But through a chance acquaintance that Weise made there with a Berlin company owner, contact was made a few weeks later with the company Befort Optik in Wetzlar, which developed a camera that can record the field of vision of cattle with two wide-angle lenses. Software developer Peter Menzel from the company C.O.M. Wetzlar made it possible for the images to be linked with the characteristics of the cow's optics and projected onto the VR goggles. In the meantime, Peter Menzel has taken over the production of the cameras and sales in addition to the software development. The LWK is involved in licence sales for the software.

Little by little, Benito Weise cleared one technical stumbling block after another out of the way - and there were many. Chamber director Hans-Joachim Harms worked to ensure that the project did not fail for financial reasons.

Also in use in Switzerland

Shortly after the presentation at EuroTier in November 2018, the world's largest trade fair for animal husbandry and management in Hanover, the cow goggles were ready for series production. The agricultural trade association bought five of them, and almost all the training and research centres in the individual German states followed suit - some of them even bought two. Both versions of the VR glasses are available at the LBZ Echem itself: There is a Pro version with very light-sensitive sensors and a less light-sensitive, but lighter, cheaper and more energy-efficient version. The popularity of the invention from Echem is also growing internationally: the cow goggles are already being used in Austria and Switzerland, and the LBZ is also receiving enquiries from New Zealand and China, among others.

Benito Weise, who has long been working on adding the acoustic perception of a cow to the cow goggles, is delighted with the digitisation award. Horse goggles are also due to be launched on the market soon.

Source: uelzener-presse