AGROTECH09: BUILDING AGRICULTURAL ROBOTS WITH LEGO MINDSTORM. A MULTIDISCIPLINARY AND MULTICULTURAL APPROACH

This activity has been designed in the context of an innovation project devoted to the coordination on mathematical, physical, and engineering contents for a transversal path on mecatronics, automated control and information and communication technologies (from now onwards AGROMECATIC) at agricultural engineering studies in the Technical University of Madrid. One of the main tasks has consisted on setting up a new subject, robotics in agriculture (equivalent to 7 ECTS), which is used as a platform to test the abilities of the students to apply various aspects of the knowledge gathered along the previous 4 years on agricultural engineering, with special emphasis on.
The students are demanded to build a variety of basic mechanisms into an autonomous vehicle capable of performing user defined general and specific agricultural tasks (such as selective harvest, transport, loading and unloading of product). The robot is programmed using object oriented language (LEJOS, JAVA for LEGO) and has to cover a variety of behaviors: navigation, exploration, and previous defined agricultural tasks.
As a mean to test the skills developed by the students and to reinforce the multidisciplinary nature of AGROMECATICS, a European contest: AGROTECH09 has been settled, which is co-organized by BEST (Board of European Students of Technology). The activity will take place between the 11th and 14th of May at ETSI Agrónomos and recognizes up to 2 ECTS of individual dedication. 40 students from 16 countries with large variability of backgrounds: computers science, agronomy, engineering, physics, tele-communication will work jointly to solve a challenge which will be public on the 11th of May with all materials being provided by the organization.