Automated Strawberry Picker

Wither the migrant agricultural laborer: Harvest CROO Robotics Develops Strawberry Picker, the Latest Solution in Agricultural Robotics

Harvest CROO Robotics is developing and beginning to test the latest technology for agricultural robotics – an automated strawberry picker. The farming industry, nationwide, has felt the pain and unreliability of human labor. Over $750 million per year is spent in the U.S. picking strawberries alone.

The CTO…

[…] took to the fields to study and observe the way human pickers harvest strawberries. With that information, he began outlining and conceptualizing the first prototype, which mimics the ways humans currently pick.

I wonder if the pickers he was observing knew they were perhaps demonstrating their way out of a job?

Interestingly, this weekend I watched McFarland USA, which is a sports movie about a cross-country team in a backwater town in central California full of agricultural pickers. That’s certainly not a profession anyone would love, but it employs some of the most disadvantaged people in the country, who have few other options.