URUMQI, July 22 (Xinhua) -- It has 108 mechanical arms, rolls through cotton fields like a slow-moving tank, and performs more than 300,000 snips an hour. It is not some new weapon from a superhero movie, but a real robot built to do one of farming's most tedious jobs: cotton topping.
The unmanned machine, developed by Chinese engineers, is now operating in the vast cotton fields of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the country's largest cotton-producing area.
Standing 3.8 meters tall and weighing 8 tonnes, this robotic cotton topper is equipped with advanced sensors and machine vision. According to its manufacturer, Viewer Tech, a Xinjiang-based agricultural robotics company, the machine can cover up to 2 hectares per hour, an efficiency roughly 120 times that of manual labor.
Trials showed that the robotic approach can boost average yields by nearly 600 kg per hectare, with a net gain of more than 3,000 yuan (around 44 U.S. dollars) per hectare, said Liu Hangxing, general manager of Viewer Tech.
For generations, cotton topping has meant backbreaking work in scorching summer heat. Farmers have to walk row by row, snapping off the top of each plant by hand to control height and curb unproductive branches.
The job demands careful judgment: weaker plants need less removed, and stronger ones need more. Manual topping, once the only option, often produced uneven results because of variations in skill and pace, directly affecting yields.
The new robot, now in its fourth generation, uses binocular vision cameras and AI algorithms to scan each plant, locate the topping point within milliseconds, and guide its 108 mechanical arms to make the cut. From identification to action, the entire process can mimic the hand technique of experienced cotton farmers.
"This robot allows us to achieve full mechanization and intelligence across the entire cotton growth cycle," said Zhou Shuai, general manager of Xinmiao Agricultural Technology, a company based in Shihezi, a major cotton-producing area in northern Xinjiang. Founded by a group of post-90s entrepreneurs, the firm manages approximately 133 hectares of cotton fields.
Zhou said he was impressed by the robot's efficiency, noting that its daily output would require 50 to 60 workers. He added that the topping success rate had exceeded 90 percent.
Before deploying the robot, Zhou's company had already automated irrigation, fertilization, spraying and weeding using domestically developed BeiDou satellite positioning and AI technology. All field operations are managed by just five people.
Xinjiang's cotton sector is already among the world's most mechanized, with an overall mechanization rate for cultivation and harvesting surpassing 97 percent.
The cotton-topping robot is just one example of a broader push into agricultural automation across this region. In recent years, companies, universities and research institutes have ramped up innovation and R&D efforts in cotton machinery, focusing on precision, efficiency and intelligence.
Last year, a collaborative effort between Xinjiang University and EAVISION, a robotics tech company based in Xinjiang, led to the successful development of a cotton laser-topping robot.
"Robotic technology is getting more mature," said Pei Xinmin, a researcher at Xinjiang's agricultural and rural mechanization development center.
"It is not just about cotton. It provides a replicable model for smart agriculture in other crops, accelerating the digital transformation of farming across Xinjiang," Pei added. ■
