Abstract: On the basis of industry standards, a device for testing the burning cone falling out propensity of cigarettes was designed, wherein an actuator is configured to exert flicking and tapping forces on cigarette; a high-speed force acquisition device is designed to detect the magnitude and acting time of the acting force instantaneously; and the falling out of burning cone is automatically detected by combining infrared temperature metering with image recognizing. The stability, accuracy and repeatability of the device were tested with two kinds of king size cigarette provided by China Tobacco Jiangxi Industrial Limited Corporation. The results showed that under the action of flicking or tapping, the maximum standard deviation of acting position was 0.05 mm, that of acting force was 3.6 mN and that of acting time was 0.002 s. All those values were within the tolerance ranges of standards and every burning cone falling out was correctly identified. The standard deviations of repeatability of the two cigarette samples ranged between 1.37%-2.24% under flicking and 2.09%-2.24% under tapping, which suggested that the device featured high stability. This technology provides a support for the automatic detection of burning cone falling out propensity of cigarettes.