Animal Facial & Body Analysis for Scientific Discovery
We develop practical, usable tools for scientifically rigorous behavior, locomotion and activity measurement.
MELD Platform – Multi-animal Ensemble Landmark Detector (MELD) is an AI-driven tool for accurately detecting and tracking animal facial landmarks. Currently, it supports cats’ and dogs’ facial landmark schemas grounded in AnimalFACS.
You can use MELD to detect facial landmarks on videos in your browser with no additional installments needed!
Animal Pain & Emotion Recognition
Today, it’s widely recognized that animals can feel not only pain and stress but also positive emotions. In the past, animal welfare focused mostly on preventing suffering. But now, there’s a growing shift toward making sure animals have positive emotional experiences too.
While scientists do not yet fully agree on the precise definition of animal emotions, they are thought of as internal states that affect an animal’s body, mind, and behavior. Pain, an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience, although traditionally studied separately from emotions, also has an affective component.
Because animals can’t tell us how they feel, deciphering their emotions is extremely challenging. Behavior, and in particular facial and body expressions, in particular, is a crucial communication channel of an animal’s emotions and pain, used by most mammals.
Tech4Animals is a pioneer in animal affective computing. We developed deep learning and landmark-based approaches to decipher emotional states and pain from behavior and facial expressions of various species (see Automated Video-based Pain Recognition in Cats using Facial Landmarks, Deep Learning for Video-based Automated Pain Recognition in Rabbits).
Will the machine beat human vets in animal pain assessment?
Read our paper Comparison Between AI and Human Expert Performance in Acute Pain Assessment in Sheep to find out!
Enhancing Working Dogs: The AI revolution
We develop AI-powered tools to support the training, work, and welfare of working dogs including guide dogs, detection units, and search-and-rescue teams.
Our products enable:
- Structured tracking of individual training plans and outcomes
- Data-driven decision support for dog trainers for dog selection
- Automated personalized performance analysis based on behavioral data
- Continuous in-kennel welfare monitoring for early detection of stress, fatigue, abnormal patterns and health risks in kennel environments
By partnering with leading working dogs organizations worldwide, we aim to enhance data-driven decision-making in canine operations—improving outcomes for both dogs and their handlers.
Contact us to explore collaboration opportunities.
