The development of technology, such as the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence, has significantly advanced many fields of study. Animal research is no exception, as these technologies have enabled data collection through various sensing devices. Advanced computer systems equipped with artificial intelligence capabilities can process these data, allowing researchers to identify significant behaviors related to the detection of illnesses, discerning the emotional state of the animals, and even recognizing individual animal identities. This review includes articles in the English language published between 2011 and 2022. A total of 263 articles were retrieved, and after applying inclusion criteria, only 23 were deemed eligible for analysis. Sensor fusion algorithms were categorized into three levels: Raw or low (26%), Feature or medium (39%), and Decision or high (34%). Most articles focused on posture and activity detection, and the target species were primarily cows (32%) and horses (12%) in the three levels of fusion. The accelerometer was present at all levels. The findings indicate that the study of sensor fusion applied to animals is still in its early stages and has yet to be fully explored. There is an opportunity to research the use of sensor fusion for combining movement data with biometric sensors to develop animal welfare applications. Overall, the integration of sensor fusion and machine learning algorithms can provide a more in-depth understanding of animal behavior and contribute to better animal welfare, production efficiency, and conservation efforts.

Autonomous navigation is challenging for mobile robots, especially in an unknown environment. Commonly, the robot requires multiple sensors to map the environment, locate itself, and make a plan to reach the target. However, reinforcement learning methods offer an alternative to map-free navigation tasks by learning the optimal actions to take. In this article, deep reinforcement learning agents are implemented using variants of the deep Q networks method, the D3QN and rainbow algorithms, for both the obstacle avoidance and the goal-oriented navigation task. The agents are trained and evaluated in a simulated environment. Furthermore, an analysis of the changes in the behaviour and performance of the agents caused by modifications in the reward function is conducted.

This work has been focused on the part of the population with hearing impairment who owns a dog and that worries about not listening the dog barks, specially when a risky situation is taking place at home. A survey was carried out on people with deafness problems to find out hazard situations which they are exposed at home. A system prototype was developed to be integrated as a component of ambient intelligence (AmI) for ambient assisted living (AAL) that serves to Hearing Impaired People (HIP). The prototype detects dog barks and notifies users through both a smart mobile app and a visual feedback. It consists of a connection between a Raspberry Pi 3 card and a ReSpeaker Mic Array v2.0 microphone array; a communication module with a smartphone was implemented, which displays written messages or vibrations when receiving notifications. The cylinder-shaped device was designed by the authors and sent it to 3D print with a resin material. The prototype recognized the barking efficiently by using a machine learning model based on Support Vector Machine technique. The prototype was tested with deaf people which were satisfied with precision, signal intensity, and activation of lights.