Harvesting Robots

Buying advice

Build the robot into your labour plan

Defra's automation in horticulture review estimates that approximately 50,000 to 60,000 seasonal workers have been needed each year to bring in the UK harvest, which shows how much work a picking machine is being asked to absorb. Map who you will still need around it: a person supervising each shift, staff swapping and moving full crates, a technician on call and pickers for the rows or fruit it cannot reach. The same review finds that growers can lack the confidence to invest because of uncertainty in the duration, security and scale of production contracts. Line up any purchase or lease term with the supply contracts it depends on, and ask makers whether shorter commitments are possible.

Budget for changes to the crop itself

Picking robots rarely drop into a growing system unchanged. In their Precision Agriculture review of fruit-harvesting robots, Zhou and colleagues treat visual perception and the detachment mechanism as central hurdles between prototypes and commercial use, and both depend on how the fruit is presented. Ask the maker what it needs from your planting: training and pruning style, row or table height, plant spacing, lighting under cover and the state of the paths. Re-planting, re-training a canopy or re-building a tunnel can be a large cost in its own right, and it ties you to that layout for many seasons. Get those requirements in writing before you sign anything.

Comparing Agrobot, Dogtooth, Ffruco and Naio

Our October 2026 pass found that the cheapest priced listing was the Naio Oz, near $80,000, and the costliest was the Agrobot E-Series, near $300,000, and each one carried a price. Check the Naio Oz listing to see whether it picks or supports your pickers before you weigh it against the Agrobot E-Series, Dogtooth V6 or Ffruco Harvesting Robot. For the picking machines, ask to visit a grower using the same crop and growing system as you during the busiest weeks, not a demonstration plot. Find out how quickly a field engineer can reach you in the middle of harvest, and whether the maker holds spare grippers and cameras in your country.

What to look for

• The crops and growing systems it is built for: open field, tunnel or tabletop
• Picking rate per hour against your peak-season volumes
• How it handles ripeness, bruising and packing into punnets or crates

Common questions

Can one harvesting robot pick several crops?

Usually not without changes. Most picking robots are developed for a specific crop and growing system, so match the listing to what you grow before requesting a quote.

Will harvesting robots replace my pickers?

In early deployments they typically work alongside people, extending picking hours and easing peak-season pressure rather than replacing a crew outright.

Sources and further reading

• Automation in horticulture review — Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs.
  Full text of Defra's review: seasonal labour needs, readiness of robotic harvesting and the barriers growers face.
• Intelligent robots for fruit harvesting: recent developments and future challenges — Precision Agriculture (Springer).
  Peer-reviewed survey of fruit-picking robots, their perception and detachment methods, and barriers to commercial use.
• The State of Food and Agriculture 2022: Leveraging automation in agriculture for transforming agrifood systems — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
  FAO flagship report on how mechanisation, robotics and digital tools are changing crop and livestock farming.