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Instrumentation And Controls For Agricultural And Biological Engineering Students

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Conference

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Publication Date

June 22, 2008

Start Date

June 22, 2008

End Date

June 25, 2008

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Innovations in Biological/Agricultural Education-II

Tagged Division

Biological & Agricultural

Page Count

13

Page Numbers

13.753.1 - 13.753.13

DOI

10.18260/1-2--3895

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/3895

Download Count

2974

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Paper Authors

biography

George Meyer University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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GEORGE MEYER, Professor, has taught graduate and undergraduate classes that involve plant and animal growth and environmental factors, modeling, and instrumentation and controls for both agricultural and biological systems engineering students for 29 years. He has received national paper awards and recognition for his work in distance education and has received university teaching awards. His current research include measurement and modeling of crop water stress, fuzzy logic controls for turf irrigation management, and machine vision detection, enumeration, and plant species identification for spot spraying control and precision agriculture.

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Abstract
NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Instrumentation and Controls for Agricultural and Biological Engineering Students Abstract

Modern biological, biomedical, and agricultural systems use electronic sensors, instrumentation, and computers for acquisition of scientific data and for process control. Instrumentation is used for commercial product development, testing, and for basic research. An engineering course which addresses measurement principles, sensors, software, and characteristics of instrumentation and control systems with a variety of hands-on student activities will be discussed. This is a required course for two ABET accredited biological and agricultural engineering degree programs. Students of both programs participate and interact within this single course. The course assumes the student to be a junior, senior, or first year graduate student who has had an introductory electronics course and has completed a majority of the core and elective courses. The focus of student hands-on activities is through computer programming and hardware applications. Examples are presented in a draft book written by the instructor, who has taught this class for twenty years. Weekly laboratory activities include electrocardiogram, pulse oximetry, fuzzy logic temperature and humidity control, human exercise machines and energy exchange, insect detection and counting with optical sensors, pH controllers, and water flow measurements from small to large scale. Some activities are web-based bringing local research projects and instrumentation to the classroom. Student teams also develop semester projects starting at midterm. Those projects are presented as papers and posters during an annual department open house. A summary of selected student projects for the past four years and student assessments will be discussed.

Keywords: Courseware, biological systems, sensors, electronics, measurements, controls.

Meyer, G. (2008, June), Instrumentation And Controls For Agricultural And Biological Engineering Students Paper presented at 2008 Annual Conference & Exposition, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 10.18260/1-2--3895

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