Abstract: The manipulator's structure parameters were designed with the method of parametric analyses considering the natural orchard environment firstly to minimize the structure parameters while to improve the harvesting space.After the inverse and the forward solution of kinematics were derived, a virtual simulation environment was made by cooperation of ADAMS and MATLAB, combining the 3-D solid designing, dynamics modeling, controlling and visualization simulation.The results indicate that the apple harvesting manipulator could locate positions of 90.2%of the apples in the workspace within the required conditions, which proved the optical structure parameters achieve goals of the optimal designing.