MULTIDISCIPLINARY EXERCISES: COORDINATING PRACTICES AND APPLICATIONS FROM FUNDAMENTAL TO APPLIED SUBJECTS IN AGRICULTURE ENGINEERING

In order to improve the training of the new graduates in the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and to satisfy the demands of the agrarian sector, the Agricultural Engineering studies in the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) accepted in March 2008 an educational path on Information Technologies and Automation.
In this context a coordinate Project of Educational Innovation supported by the UPM is been carried out. One important task in this project is the elaboration of practices and joint applications which are proposed to the students in successive matters upon different points of view: “Common Practices”.
One example of these common practices consists of the “Design and Analysis of Suspensions Systems for Stabilizing the Roll of Spray Booms”. In this example students of different academic levels are asked to solve the complexity of the problem along different subjects: Field measurements (analysis of variability on chemical applications using a spray boom) will be realized in the Agriculture Machinery topic - equivalent to 4.5 ECTS -. Analytical models for the analysis of different suspension systems in the Mechanics and Mechanisms topic -4.5 ECTS -. In Agriculture Applied Electronics – 2.5 ECTS – sensors and actuators will be studied to design controllers. Control strategies for damping the resonance frequency of the suspension will be studied in Process Simulation and Optimization – 3.5 ECTS –. And, finally, the design and development of a vehicle with a spray bar and the corresponding suspension systems will be done in the Robotics topic – 7 ECTS –.
The students will work on the same example during different academic years and semesters using common materials and working spaces. The whole experience will be displayed in Moodle, a virtual learning environment.
These activities were created as a mean to do that students will be able to establish relationships between their scientific basic training (Applied Mathematics, Physics …) and their technological formation.