Abstract: Cotton is not only an important cash crop but also a strategic material．Mechanized cotton picking is an important way to solve cotton harvesting, and picking system is core component of cotton picker．Through field investigation in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and literature reviews, research status and development process of cotton pickers at home and abroad was clarified, with a focus on analyzing cotton picking spindles, cotton picking drums, which were key components of multi-rotor spindle-type cotton pickers, and cotton picker mechanisms research status．As well as difficulties and deficiencies encountered in picking system research were discussed．Proposals for future development were pointed out to address cotton pickers' shortcomings in China, including low manufacturing level, low picking rate, high impurity rate, and insufficient mechanism analysis, to promote rapid development of spindle-type cotton picker picking system in China．