Back
Recognition of pain in horses and other animals is important, because pain is a manifestation of disease and decreases animal welfare. Pain diagnostics for humans typically includes self-evaluation and location of the pain with the help of standardized forms, and labeling of the pain by an clinical expert using pain scales. However, animals cannot verbalize their pain as humans can, and the use of standardized pain scales is challenged by the fact that animals as horses and cattle, being prey animals, display subtle and less obvious pain behavior - it is simply beneficial for a prey animal to appear healthy, in order lower the interest from predators. We work together with veterinarians to develop methods for automatic video-based recognition of pain in horses. These methods are typically trained with video examples of behavioral traits labeled with pain level and pain characteristics. This automated, user independent system for recognition of pain behavior in horses will be the first of its kind in the world. A successful system might change the concept for how we monitor and care for our animals.
Prof. Dr. Hedvig Kjellström (Department of Robotics, Perception and Learning (RPL) at KTH in Stockholm, Sweden)
Professor
Hedvig Kjellström is a Professor of Computer Science and the head of the Department of Robotics, Perception and Learning (RPL) at KTH in Stockholm, Sweden. She is also affiliated with the Perceiving Systems department since 2016. She received an MSc in Engineering Physics and a PhD in Computer Science from KTH in 1997 and 2001, respectively. The topic of her doctoral thesis was 3D reconstruction of human motion in video. Between 2002 and 2006 she worked as a scientist at the Swedish Defence Research Agency, where she focused on Information Fusion and Sensor Fusion. In 2007 she returned to KTH, pursuing research in activity analysis in video. Her present research focuses on methods for enabling artificial agents to behave and reason in ways interpretable to humans, and also to interpret human behavior and reasoning. These ideas are applied in Social Robotics, Performing Arts, and Healthcare. In 2010, she was awarded the Koenderink Prize for fundamental contributions in Computer Vision for her ECCV 2000 article on human motion reconstruction, written together with Michael Black and David Fleet. She has written around 100 papers in the fields of Robotics, Computer Vision, Information Fusion, Machine Learning, Cognitive Science, Speech, and Human-Computer Interaction. She is mostly active within the areas of Robotics and Computer Vision, where she is an Associate Editor for IEEE TPAMI and IEEE RA-L, and regularly serves as Area Chair/Associate Editor for the major conferences.