Development of a new two-level hierarchical control system, which significantly increases excavating capacity, as well as availability, and reliability of the bucket wheel excavator, is presented in this paper. On the first – basic level functions of local regulators and sensors are executed and the second – higher level is performing adaptation based on prediction of cutting resistance of materials to be excavated. Development of basic control system consists of design and tuning of local regulators, as well as design of highly precise and reliable sensors of basic movements. The predictive–adaptive higher-level control system is a neuro-fuzzy controller. By predicting cutting resistance of materials to be excavated reference of slewing speed and controller parameters are adapted. The structure of the new control system is based on expert knowledge, gained through numerous simulations of developed non-linear model in state space, where the disturbances are precisely modeled, and numerous experiments.