The apple picker is a prototype, from Abundant Robotics, an SRI spinoff. It suffers from being a Silicon Valley R&D effort - the computer technology is cool, and the mechanical parts are too flimsy. Somebody needs to get those guys some hardass mechanical designers from John Deere or Caterpillar or Ponsse who know how to make machinery work reliably in the field. I think they're still at the angel investor stage. They'll need another funding round soon, and if they're lucky, their funder will know who to put in there to get the thing out of R&D and into production.

> some hardass mechanical designers from John Deere or Caterpillar or Ponsse

Since all those companies are doing really badly, there should be plenty of those to go around.

A big reason why a robot might not outperform a human is that it's just cheaper to hire humans. And that strikes me as an excellent incentive to make sure humans are paid more and within a legal framework; it increases the rate of technological development.

And while the resulting unemployment is a very serious issue, I'm inclined to think that the benefits outweigh the cost.

(That said, I very aware of the fact that this is easy for me to say)

Most tree-grown fruits fall off the tree easily when ripe, so something like this cherry harvester seems like it would be a lot more efficient - https://youtu.be/YKu6xwJptkc?t=2m4s

Are most tree-grown fruits actually harvested when ripe? I seem to recall reading something a while back about how most fruit is picked before it is ripe, and picking is timed such that it ripens by the time it gets transported to the warehouse, grocery store, purchased, etc.

The tree-grown fruit that is sold in the UK has been harvested before it is ripe, it is still too hard to eat when you throw it away.