# A Comparison of Deep Learning and Established Methods for Calf Behaviour Monitoring

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.13041 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.13041/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 68 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Aug 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Delving Deep into Rectifiers: Surpassing Human-Level Performance on ImageNet Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.01852/) (2015)
- [Gaussian Error Linear Units (GELUs)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.08415/) (2016)
- [Deep learning for time series classification: a review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.04356/) (2018)
- [ROCKET: Exceptionally fast and accurate time series classification using random convolutional kernels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.13051/) (2019)
- [MINIROCKET: A Very Fast (Almost) Deterministic Transform for Time Series Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.08791/) (2020)
- [Bake off redux: a review and experimental evaluation of recent time series classification algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13029/) (2023)
- [Improving Position Encoding of Transformers for Multivariate Time Series Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16642/) (2023)
- [Deep Learning-based Cattle Activity Classification Using Joint Time-frequency Data Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.03381/) (2020)
- [Animal behavior classification via deep learning on embedded systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12295/) (2021)
- [Futility Analysis in the Cross-Validation of Machine Learning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.6974/) (2014)
- [Accelerometer-Based Multivariate Time-Series Dataset for Calf Behavior Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00053/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In recent years, there has been considerable progress in research on human activity recognition using data from wearable sensors. This technology also has potential in the context of animal welfare in livestock science. In this paper, we report on research on animal activity recognition in support of welfare monitoring. The data comes from collar-mounted accelerometer sensors worn by Holstein and Jersey calves, the objective being to detect changes in behaviour indicating sickness or stress. A key requirement in detecting changes in behaviour is to be able to classify activities into classes, such as drinking, running or walking. In Machine Learning terms, this is a time-series classification task, and in recent years, the Rocket family of methods have emerged as the state-of-the-art in this area. We have over 27 hours of labelled time-series data from 30 calves for our analysis. Using this data as a baseline, we present Rocket's performance on a 6-class classification task. Then, we compare this against the performance of 11 Deep Learning (DL) methods that have been proposed as promising methods for time-series classification. Given the success of DL in related areas, it is reasonable to expect that these methods will perform well here as well. Surprisingly, despite taking care to ensure that the DL methods are configured correctly, none of them match Rocket's performance. A possible explanation for the impressive success of Rocket is that it has the data encoding benefits of DL models in a much simpler classification framework.