Patent No. EP4183491 (titled "Sorting Animals Based On Non-Invasive Determination Of Animal Characteristics") was filed by Aquaticode on Nov 23, 2022. The application was issued on Jul 30, 2025.
An animal sorting system comprises a conveyor moving animals along a path, a camera for capturing visual images, and an ultrasound transducer configured to obtain ultrasound images while the animal moves along a path portion. Control circuitry analyzes the visual and ultrasound images to determine animal characteristics—such as gender, size, fat percentage, or disease presence—potentially utilizing machine vision for transducer starting-point determination and artificial neural networks for characteristic prediction. A sorter, featuring a mechanical arm controlled by the circuitry, directs animals from the conveyor to specific physical locations based on these characteristics. To maintain high throughput, animals may be positioned side-by-side in compartments, and transducers may travel with the animals to ensure blur-free, high-accuracy imaging.

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