Objective  To develop an automatic navigation system for agricultural machinery based on satellite-based precision single-point precision.

Method  With the domestic Lovol TX1204 tractor as the platform, the output data of the domestic satellite-based precision single-point positioning board were used as the position feedback of the agricultural machinery, the position-velocity Kalman filter was designed to filter the positioning data, and the preview following PID path tracking control algorithm was developed. The model control parameters under different driving speed conditions were tuned, and the output data of the ground-based RTK high-precision positioning receiver were used as the references, the automatic navigation test system of agricultural machinery was built and the system performance test was carried out.

Result  In terms of linear tracking error, the average error was −0.0009436 m, the standard deviation was 0.02452 m, and the absolute maximum error was 0.08472 m. In terms of adjacent line error, the average error was 0.0007128 m, the standard deviation was 0.02986 m, and the absolute maximum error was 0.15444 m, which could meet the needs of most agricultural machinery automatic driving operations.

Conclusion  Domestic satellite-based precision single-point positioning technology can be used for agricultural machinery automatic navigation. The preview-following PID path tracking control model designed in this paper is valid and the proposed method for tuning PID parameters and foresight distance under different speed conditions provides a basis for improving the adaptive ability of this system to different speed conditions.