International Journal of Scientific Research and Engineering Development

Cotton is a major crop grown worldwide, and its production requires massive labor particularly for its harvesting. Hence, mechanization of cotton harvesting can cope with labor shortage and decrease labor costs. Most of the developing countries; still have been harvesting cotton by natural means. While developed countries have been using machines to harvest most of this important crop. The interest in cotton-harvesting machinery is increasing among many countries because of the unavailability of skilled workers and increasing labor costs.In addition, manual harvesting often leads to mixing of unwanted materials such as dry leaves, stems, and dust with the cotton, which reduces its quality and market price.To tackle aforementioned problems, this paper presents a small farm land compatible low-cost lightweight energy-efficient cotton harvesting machine integrated with crop detection intelligent mechanism. An energy-efficient sensor unit which includes a camera for capturing image of mature cotton bolls and an ondevice low-power AI model for processing the image and detecting the presence of cotton. If cotton is detected, the harvesting unit is turned on for cotton harvesting.In contrast to existing harvesting methods dependent on costly processors or cloud computing, the proposed system implements all processes onchip, making it low-cost and appropriate for rural environments with scarce internet and electricity resources.More generally, this work aims to assist smallholder farmers by providing a viable harvesting alternative that demands no physically labor, incurs minimal operating costs, enhances cotton quality, and promotes the adoption of smart farming at low costs.

Dr.S.Sajithra Varun, Ankit Kumar Deo, Sanjana B K, Niveditha V, Chaitra H G,"Low-Cost, TinyML-Enabled Portable Machinery for Precision Cotton Harvesting" International Journal of Scientific Research and Engineering Development, V9(3): Page(2654-2660) May-June 2026. ISSN: 2581-7175. www.ijsred.com. Published by Scientific and Academic Research Publishing.