Huawei’s made a name for itself as an industry-leading technology brand, pumping out some of the best consumer hardware in recent years. Following various US sanctions against the telecoms company, it has seen a 42% decrease in smartphone sales in Q4, leading to the company looking into other revenue sources. Like artificial intelligence in pig farming and coal mining.

Yup. You read that correctly. According to new reports, Huawei has turned to two of China’s largest industries (China’s home to about half the swines on planet earth). The BBC reports that Huawei is working with farms and mines to help modernise existing tech, while specifically focusing on implementing AI in pig farms.

Piggy and the Brain

You thought human facial recognition tech was cool? Huawei’s pig farming system is advanced enough to recognise individual porkers. It will even apply fancy sensors and techniques that’ll enable farmers to track each pig’s health, weight and exercise levels.

It probably sounds dumb, but agritech plays a major role in streamlining ancient human behaviour (ahem… farming). Mainly to make sure the world is adequately fed, of course.

“The pig farming is yet another example of how we try to revitalise some traditional industries with ICT (Information and Communications Technology) technologies to create more value for the industries in the 5G era,” a Huawei spokesman told the BBC.

If it works, it works. Huawei’s faced unprecedented obstacles since 2019, trying to navigate developing its own mobile ecosystem while being declined contracts to build its 5G ecosystem in many countries. Hopefully, it can find more love in its own country, and help advance tech solutions there.

Source: BBC