Growing food was for thousands of years, and in much of the world still is, a set of backbreaking monotonous but skilled tasks. It was done by humans in all weathers from scorching to freezing from burning dry to continuously coal and soaked. It was largely staffed by unfree people serfs, slaves, peons, share croppers. Since people found that they could have a better life in the cities there has been a continuous migration which has driven agricultural technology for 250 years. The arrival of mobile power sources usually fossil fuelled allowed machines driven by a human to become huge and efficient in the use of labour. There was still a huge need for labour harvesting vegetables and picking fruit. The labour crisis is now so serious in UK that farms are ceasing production of some crops and even if migration restrictions are lifted the steady rise in living standards around the world means the traditional sources of labour are disappearing.
Two major advances are needed for robotic harvesting one is identifying the item you want to pick or cut and the other is to have a tool that can pick up the produce gently. Other parts of the system exist such as precision location which has been around for years and transporting and packing the fresh produce.
In this video you can see asparagus tips being picked, image processing detects the mature shoots and then a soft picker descends and holds the stem while a knife cuts it free.
And here you can see the types of new machines. The first observation is that this is great and complex technology and will take years to hone and improve as the test and development time is limited each season and so years may pass before all issues have been identified and fixed. Production runs are small and so the cost of producing and supporting these robots is going to be high for a while yet.
