Abstract:To tackle the problems in current farmland soil sampling operation, including high labor demand, poor sampling accuracy, low automation level etc., a farmland soil sampling vehicle with its automatic operation control system was designed based on an electric drive tracked chassis. The structure components, working principle and control system scheme were elaborated. The control strategy for the sampling vehicle operation process was designed based on the finite state machine method. To realize the goal of performing soil sampling at a series of target points in the field automatically, a continuous point tracking process was designed, and the point tracking model for the sampling vehicle was established. A point tracking control algorithm was developed based on the method of vector field. From the on-line performance test results, the point tracking algorithm designed based on vector field method had good deviation correction ability. When the initial lateral deviation was 2m and the initial heading deviation was 0°, the on-line time consumed by the sampling vehicle at 0.3m/s, 0.6m/s and 0.9m/s were 15.7s,11.8s and 11.9s, respectively, and the on-line distance travelled by the sampling vehicle at 0.3m/s, 0.6m/s and 0.9m/s were 4.72m, 7.10m and 10.74m, respectively. From the continuous point tracking test results, when the operation speed of the sampling vehicle was set at 0.3m/s, 0.6m/s and 0.9m/s, the maximum absolute lateral deviations with respect to the reference path were 0.081m, 0.107m and 0.210m, respectively, the mean absolute lateral deviations were 0.018m, 0.022m and 0.050m, respectively, the standard deviations were 0.026m, 0.027m and 0.064m, respectively, and the mean absolute distance errors of the sampling vehicle with respect to the target points were 0.068m, 0.081m and 0.141m, respectively. The performance test of the soil sampling device revealed that its mechanisms could work smoothly together, the consumed time at different locations for the same sampling depth was consistent, and the coefficient variation of sample masses was small. The sampling vehicle could realize accurate continuous point tracking to a series of target points under the control of designed control process and point tracking algorithm, which permitted that the requirements for automatic farmland soil sampling could be met.