During culture process of tobacco seedlings, manual leaf-cutting is labor intensive, thus a an intelligent control system for YJY–ZD bridge type leaf-cutting machine was designed to solve the problems like complex operation, high labor costs, less efficient, low automation level, etc as exhibited by the existing leaf-cutting machines have. This system is constituted by action element, information acquisition unit, information processing unit and control circuit, which can start the cutting machine by a key, during which motion of reciprocating mechanism in crosswise and motion of the whole machine longitudinally were alternated automatically, and the movement of reciprocating mechanism was controlled by control algorithm of alternate motion to realize no impact and recover residual kinetic energy when the reciprocating mechanism changed direction. Machine testing results indicated that the proportion of un-cutting leaves is 0.55%，injured seedlings 0.4%，un-picked leaves 0.4%, and the average efficiency is 692 m2/h.