Abstract: China is rich in thin seam resources. With the continuous mining of thick and medium-thick coal seam resources, thin coal seam mining has become an inevitable choice. Drum shearer is widely used in thin seam mining because of its strong adaptability and stable performance. The development status of thin coal seam drum shearer was introduced. The advantages and disadvantages of thin and thinner coal seam shearers of major manufacturers at home and abroad were briefly analyzed. It was pointed out that low-height and high-power are the main development direction of thin coal seam shearers. With the increasing power, the key technical problems faced by thin seam shearers in the development process were presented, including the layout of the whole shearer, the design of high power density rocking arm, the research of high speed and high reliability traction walking system, the design of compact electronic control system, the design of coal loading effect and the problem of towing cable, and the solutions are given separately. This paper can provide reference for the design of high-power thin seam shearer in the future.