Here's a robot with a soft, vegetable-handling touch being developed for supermarkets. Won't be long before they'll be in the fields in an array across the drag-bar, Gnidone. If they can plant/tend/cut cabbage it'll put a zillion field workers out of a job here in NC alone.
I'd think it'd be harder to make a robot that works in the field because the produce isn't always in the same place. Sometimes the tomato is at the top of the plant, sometimes at the bottom and sometimes inside the bushy part of the plant. And, it's difficult to tell by robotic eye if the tomato is ripe or not, given there are many shades of tomatoes.
There are milking robots for cows, and even there, the udder is in roughly the same place on each cow: the bottom towards the back end. There is no need to determine if the cow is "ripe" or not, and basically, no-touch car wash technology can be used to guide the washers and milker things to the proper spot.
I do hope to see harvesting technology come of age though...theres a lot of people who break their backs so we can eat!
