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We had a chance to talk with Animals.ai - one of the winners of challenge 1 in the Feeding the Future Hackathon in an afternoon. Monday can be hectic for anyone, but they are extremely organized. Rose and Yuan were well-prepared for the meeting.
Everything started with Petit Paysan
Bloody Milk (French: Petit Paysan) is the key motivation behind Animals.ai’s startup. In the movie, cows in a dairy farm started to contract a fatal flesh-eating virus and the owner of the farm - Pierre tried to cover it up by slaughtering the sick cow himself and burying the evidence in his fields. Pierre believed by this way, the government wouldn’t be able to find out and he wouldn’t lose his entire herd. Eventually, it turned out to be so much worse.
Yuan (the co-founder) thought that was obviously wrong to act this way. She realized that there was another way to prevent such an epidemic from spreading among the farm animals.
Animals.ai company was formed in 2017 by a group of students and alumni from Lund University, Sweden. The founders’ primary goal is to create a positive impact on human-animal relationships. Participating in the Feeding the Future Hackathon, the core team members; Yuan - a computer science expert with a master degree in Economics and Rose - a master student in Communication recruited two other fellows, Harald and Gustaf, from the Engineering faculty (LTH, Lund University) to join them.
A more advanced version of Moovet - an app that tracks the wellbeing journal of farm animals using AI was proposed. Moovet not only helps farmers to keep track of their herd’s situation better, but it also plays a role in connecting farms with the Farm2Fork community. It adds transparency by analyzing the animals’ wellbeing behaviors and digital stories that are easy-to-share to the customers. By using this method, our food supply is more secure and more environmentally-cautious.
Connection is the key
Team Animals.ai found out about the Feeding the Future Hackathon thanks to their attendance in Hack The Crisis Sweden/Denmark event. A connection Yuan shared during that occasion turned out to be one of our organizers. The networking game is still going on strong despite the fact that we can’t see each other in person. Covid-19 certainly can’t stop us from connecting together.
Becoming the winner for challenge 1 was beyond Animals.ai’s expectation. The team humbly share that they weren’t extremely confident since their team did not have an expert in the Agriculture/Nutrition section. Their goals at the beginning of the hackathon were to learn more about the field and to build their connections.
The life-changing milestone officially begins now
In spite of not having a strong background in farming, Animals.ai worked really hard on their pitch from the very first stage. The team was one of the most active members on our Discord channel, each team member was reaching out to the different mentors for constructive ideas and feedback. Yet, they still encountered difficulties in time management during the actual event. The 48-hour was extremely intensive for Animals.ai because they were still completing the pitching presentation one hour prior to the submission deadline. However, hard work always pays off.
Animals.ai is now happier and more excited than ever, as their idea is now being implemented. Just like us, they are also very eager to see the final result of their effort. ‘’This Hackathon event helped us get the opportunities to access the new tools and platforms that we haven’t used before. It was truly innovative.’’ - Rose and Yuan said, smiling with excitement.
Their performance can be found here.
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