BSEN 3260. Engineering For Precision Agriculture and Forestry. (3) Lec. 2, Lab 3. Prerequisites: ELEC 3810, MATH 2650, or departmental approval. Engineering aspects of spatial technologies applied to agricultural and forest production. Data collection in the field using GPS and use of field data in site-specific applications. Fall.
Required for Biosystems Engineering option students, an elective for Forest Engineering option students.
Textbook: Deere Publishing FP401NC, The Precision-Farming Guide For Agriculturalists. ISBN 0-86691-245-2
Course Objective: Introduce concepts important in modern farming and forestry, including the ideas of location-specific treatment, mapping of field or stand performance and characteristics, equipment and technology for spatial assessments, autonomous operation of mechanized farm and forestry equipment, and variable rate technology for custom application of inputs. Investigate issues related to accuracy and granularity of measurements for particular applications. Also cover instrumentation fundamentals related to measuring important management variables in a spatial context. Topics will include general performance of instruments, reading and recording location information from GPS equipment, and creating instrument packages to record data in the field.
Course contributes to the professional component by serving as one of the engineering science courses.
Course contributes to the following program outcomes: a) knowledge of math, science, and engineering, b) design and conduct experiments, analyze and interpret data, c) design a system, component, or process, (e) identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems, j) knowledge of contemporary issues, and k) techniques, skills and engineering tools for practice.
