Social interactions of dairy cows: A distance-based approach

Animal positioning can be of crucial importance for precision livestock farming (PLF) applications and, more in general, for studying animals’ behavior. While outdoor positioning has become relatively convenient and easy to implement thanks to the GPS technology, indoor precise positioning implies more technical efforts due to the operative environment itself (Johansson & Wassénius, 2019), like obstructions and the presence of metal structures. The comparison of different methods based on relative position between animals and “absolute” position in a given reference system can help in the choice of the right technologies to adopt in PLF applications and studies.