Abstract
Land consolidation ratio for rice paddy fields reached to 64.7% as of 2008 in Korea, and this also accelerated automation of field machinery. Especially, research on autonomous tractors has been continuously conducted. Tillage is one of the labor-, energy-, and time-consuming field operations. Most important requirements for autonomous tractors would be travelling path planning and electronic system to control the tractor to follow the path. The instruction of computer was required to conduct the tillage operation in field with unmanned traveling tractor. This instruction was coincidently used in the control of the traveling path and the motion of tractor. The objectives of the study were 1) to characterize and model tillage operating sequence, turning pattern, and 2) to develop tillage path formation programs for autonomous tractor and evaluate the performance.