Abstract:Against the backdrop of large-scale and industrialized development of the edible mushroom industry, harvesting remains highly dependent on manual labor and has become a key bottleneck restricting full-process automation. Focusing on major cultivated species in China, such as shiitake mushroom, enoki mushroom, button mushroom, and oyster mushroom, the characteristics of harvesting environments under different cultivation modes were systematically reviewed, including log cultivation, bed cultivation, bag cultivation, and bottle cultivation, and the operational constraints and technical requirements associated with typical production systems were analyzed. The research progress and commercialization of edible mushroom harvesting robots at home and abroad were comprehensively reviewed. The automated technical routes adopted in foreign countries under standardized cultivation systems were compared with the domestic technical features oriented toward multiple species and unstructured environments, and the differences and implications of domestic and international harvesting technologies were summarized. Key technologies of edible mushroom harvesting robots were discussed, including end-effectors, perception, mobile platforms, system integration, and embodied intelligence. Particular attention was given to the development of gripping, suction, cutting, and bio-inspired flexible end-effectors, as well as to the application trends of deep learning, stereo vision, and multimodal information fusion in maturity recognition and target localization. The adaptability and integration characteristics of fixed, mobile, and rail-guided platforms in narrow and humid cultivation environments were also examined. Current technical challenges were summarized, including insufficient perception robustness, poor compatibility of end-effectors, low operational efficiency, and weak economic feasibility. Finally, future prospects were proposed from three aspects: strengthening the standardization of cultivation modes and the integration of agronomy with agricultural machinery, developing embodied intelligent harvesting systems integrating perception, decision-making, and control, and constructing automated production lines that coordinated harvesting, root cutting, grading, and other postharvest processes, so as to provide theoretical support and technical references for the intelligent upgrading of China’s edible mushroom industry.