The Field robot means the machinery applied for outdoor tasks in construction, agriculture and undersea etc. In this study, to field-robotize a hydraulic excavator that is mostly used in construction working, we have developed an automatic excavation system and an adaptive control system. A model-reference adaptive controller has been designed based on the model that is obtained through off-line system identification. It is illustrated by computer simulations that the proposed control system gives good performance in the trajectory tracking control and the adaptation to parameter variation.