Nuts are the important economic forest tree species of China. De-shell is the key operation of nut deep processing. There are some problems in the current nut cracking devices such as the low decorticating rate, the high nuts losses rate and nutmeat integrity problems, etc.. The foundation of force analysis is to establish contact model for nut and mechanical. The nut surface is rough and irregular, so the contact area cannot be modeled as regular shape. How to set up contact constraint model is the key problem to accomplish non-loss shelling. In order to study the shell-breaking mechanism and structural design of the nut shelling manipulation, a multi-fingered metamorphic manipulator is presented. An overview of the nut shelling technology and the contact manipulator modeling are proposed. The origin and application of metamorphic mechanisms are introduced. Then the research contents and development prospects of nut shelling manipulator are described.