Instrumentation And Controls For Agricultural And Biological Engineering Students

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.