The Club of mechanics met in Bologna
There was a record number of participants in the 28th meeting of the club of Bologna which took place during EIMA 2018. The main theme was the new technologies and services for the mechanized agriculture sector. The Pellizzi Prizes were awarded. The next meeting will be held in next November in Germany
The event number 28 of the annual meeting of the Club of Bologna, the international body that brings together the world’s leading experts in the field of engineering and agricultural mechanics, took place in Bologna, at the EIMA International, on November 10-11. The meeting has registered the highest number of entries in the last 10 years, with 71 participants coming from 23 countries.
The Club of Bologna was born in 1989, on the occasion of the edition of the Bologna event of that time, through the will of FederUnacoma to form an academic working team to develop strategies of agricultural mechanization at an international level.
The 2018 meeting was opened by the welcome address of the President of the Federation, Alessandro Malavolti, who analyzed challenges and difficulties raised by the new technologies and services available for agricultural mechanization of our days. The topic has been discussed during three different sessions.
The first concerned the remote maintenance of the machinery and as coordinator there was Peter Pickel, of the John Deere European Center of Technological Innovation. The second was about how new technologies are considered by users, and was conducted by Hermann Auernhammer, of the Technical University of Monaco.
Finally, the specialized mechanization for horticulture, and the session was conducted by the President of the Club of Bologna, Paolo Balsari, a lecturer at the Disafa Department of the University of Turin.
Over the course of the meeting, the establishment of three working teams was announced, that in the next three years will have to implement specific activity programs to develop mechanization in the African countries, to obtain an increasingly ethical approach in the construction and marketing of agricultural machinery, and to help the farmers disseminate correct and effective applications of the new agricultural technologies.
On the first day of the meeting, the Giuseppe Pellizzi Award winners were given the awards. The contest is in memory of the “professor of professors” of engineering and agricultural mechanics, the designer of the Club of Bologna, who passed away in 2012.
This the third edition of this competition that awards compensations to the authors of the best three college thesis on agricultural mechanization coming from the different universities of the world participating in the context.
The winners have the chance to participate in the Club for the next five years. Daeun Choi, of the Pennsylvania State University (USA), won the first prize for his system that utilizes infrared to know in advance the quantity and state of ripening of lemons or oranges on the branches of citrus plants.
The second prize was awarded to Andrii Yatskul, of the La Salle University (France), for a working methodology that offers greater efficiency in energy consumption during sowing. The third prize was given both to the Italian Marco Grella, of the University of Turin, for his new methods of indirect testing to assess the drift effect in the phytosanitary activity in the field, and to the Spanish Antonio Miranda, of the University of Cordoba, for his system that optimizes the application of plant protection products in olive groves.
The reports of the works of the meeting and the presentation posters of the four winning theses are available in the dedicated sections of the clubofbologna.org website.
The 29th meeting of the Club is already scheduled for November 10th and 11th in Hanover, on the occasion of the 2019 edition of the Agritechnica Trade Fair.
