ABSTRACT

Key Laboratory of Modern Precision Agriculture System Integration Research, Ministry of Education, P.O. Box 125 China Agricultural University, Beijing, P.R. China, 100083

Received Jun. 5, 2006, accepted in revised form Oct. 20, 2006

1. Introduction

Laser-controlled land leveling systems have been commonly used in agricultural applications in Australia, Japan, the United States and some other developed countries since 1980s.Efficient land leveling can reduce the work time in crop establishment and management, increase the yield and improve the quality. Laser-controlled land leveling system was introduced into China and mainly used in Heilongjiang and Xinjiang in 1990s. So far, laser land leveling was carried out in practical applications mainly according to the experiences of user. The procedure of land leveling was timeconsuming and not able to exert the potential of laser technology used for land leveling, especially in large-scaled fields. There are several commercially available software applications to provide appropriate horizontal or slope reference planes for the guidance of laser land leveling. The AgGPS MultiPlane (Trimble Inc., USA) is capable of creating 3D land topographic maps by using the field topographic data collected by the GeoStar or an AgGPS Field Information System. The AgForm-3D software (Topcon, USA) also can view and analyze the existing field contours and profiles. The field can be designed as a single plane with a constant cross slope, or segmented into many subfields with different cross slopes. In addition, two software applications, GradePlane for Windows (MEI, USA) and Datalogger (Auto Farm, USA), are available for 3D topographic survey. Although there commercially available software applications can provide the topographic map of the field, however the route for the guidance of land leveling is not involved. The operator can not know the position of the tractor in the field and where the next purpose is. The objective of this study was to develop an assistant-decision support system (ADSS) based on GPS and video with three main functions: 1. to design horizontal or slope reference planes for leveling practice, 2. to guide the movements of land leveling machine, and 3. to evaluate the effort of land leveling.