Lotus root is a widely planted vegetable in China, with good nutritional value and economic value. However, it is difficult to harvest lotus root, and needs to be harvested manually in lotus pond with the depth of about 40 cm and low temperature water. To solve the low efficiency and high labor intensity of lotus root manual harvesting, an intelligent, effective and low-damage crawler self-propelled hydraulic lotus root harvester is designed, which can improve the efficiency of lotus root harvesting, and promote the large-scale development of lotus root industry. The harvester is mainly composed of power system, water circuit, hydraulic system and control system. The total power of the machine is provided by the diesel engine, the moving mechanism is crawler type, and the mode of flushing slit is swinging jet. Harvesting experiments were conducted in 3 different lotus root fields. The results showed that the lotus root harvesting depth is 0.4 ~ 0.5 m, the harvesting ratio is > 95%, and the lotus root damage ratio is < 5%, and the fuel consumption is < 215 g/(kW·h). In ordinary fields, speed of the harvester is > 3 m/min and the average working efficiency is 0.04 hm2/h, which is 4 ~ 5 times of manual harvesting. This study provides a useful reference for the research and promotion of lotus root harvester.