Chinese medicinal materials are important raw materials for China’s pharmaceutical industry and a pillar of characteristic agricultural economy in some regions, playing a significant role in rural revitalization. With the rapid development of agricultural intelligent equipment and technologies such as artificial intelligence, automated and intelligent Chinese medicinal material harvesting robots have gradually become a research hotspot in the field of agricultural equipment, aiming to address the issues of low efficiency and high cost in manual harvesting of Chinese medicinal materials. This paper reviews the application scenarios and research progress of Chinese medicinal material harvesting robots, sorts out the current research and development status of Chinese medicinal material harvesting equipment at home and abroad. Based on the characteristics of Chinese medicinal materials, such as a wide variety, diverse forms, and varied growth environments (such as mountainous areas, fields, and under forests), it analyzes the technical characteristics of different types of Chinese medicinal material harvesting machinery, discusses the key technologies of each core subsystem of Chinese medicinal material harvesting robots, and dissects the main technical bottlenecks currently faced. Finally, it looks forward to the application prospects of high-tech technologies such as artificial intelligence in the field of Chinese medicinal material harvesting equipment, and proposes that future Chinese medicinal material harvesting robots will develop towards the direction of intelligence, precision, multi-adaptability and unmanned harvesting.