**4. Conclusions**

This study analyzed the process of manual picking of tea buds and investigated the mechanical functioning and mechanic paths for bionic tea-bud picking. The bionic picking mechanics paths obtained herein can be used to determine the structural design of a lowdamage, fast-picking mechanism to use for tea shoots. The main findings of this study are as follows:


**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, K.L., Z.W., C.C. and X.Z.; methodology, K.L., Z.W., C.C. and K.Q.; software, K.L. and M.A.; validation, K.L., X.Z. and Z.W.; formal analysis, K.L.; investigation, K.L.; data curation, K.L.; writing—original draft preparation, K.L.; writing—review and editing, K.L., Z.W., C.C. and K.Q.; supervision, K.L. and M.A.; funding acquisition, Z.W. and K.Q. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by the National Key R&D Program of China [grant number 2021YFD1601102] and by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 52105239].

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable. **Acknowledgments:** The authors would like to thank Zhengmin Wu from State Key Laboratory of Tea Plant Biology and Utilization for providing equipment and technical support during the experiments. We also thank other colleagues in the laboratory such as Kuan Qin, Xuenchen Zheng, and Minhui An for their help in the experiments.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
