Fruit picking is traditionally done entirely by hand which is time-consuming, expensive, and impacted by frequent labour shortages. Human pickers also damage about 5–15% of their harvest, which as an example cuts an apple’s value by a factor of 10. To tackle this, Ripe Robotics design, build, and operate robots that pick apples and stone fruit for commercial
orchards.
Artificial intelligence has advanced sufficiently to detect and assess outdoor grown fruit better than humans, finally making robotic picking feasible. Data collected can also be analysed for disease, damage, yield estimates and much more. Over time the hardware can be upgraded to do pruning, thinning, and precision spraying, leading to fully automated agriculture.