Pilot harvesting robots in fruit growing and viticulture

Fruit growers and winegrowers harvest with robots

Future prospectStrictly regulatedLetting machines & robots work autonomouslyAgriculture

Fits: Production, engineering & maintenance

If it works: robots help pick fruit or grapes at peak times, even at night, and partly make up for missing harvest workers. Today, harvesting robots for apples, strawberries or grapes run mainly in research and on pilot farms, more slowly than a skilled person and with problems when fruit is hidden.

Is this for you?

  • You want to be a pilot farm or prepare early, because you regularly lack workers at harvest time.
  • Your plantings are uniform: trellises, hedgerows or table-top systems with fixed row spacing, and flat or moderately sloping tracks.
  • You can give up a few rows for trials over one harvest and have someone who supervises the robot the whole time.
First step today

Use the template below to get an overview, with sources, of where harvesting robots stand for your crop, and check your own conditions at the same time: training system, row spacing, slope, tracks. Do not enter any photos of harvest workers or site plans with an address.

How to go about it

  1. Define pilot rows, crop and stop criteria
  2. Assess hazards in the rows, the headland and the yard
  3. Choose a robot with the manufacturer or a research partner
  4. Test in cordoned-off rows under supervision
  5. Extend rows and times of day step by step
  6. Maintain the sensors and evaluate the pilot

Templates to copy

Try it now
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Analyse
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Plan the rollout
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Included in the training

The complete guide

  • 6 steps explaining exactly what to do
  • 3 proven templates to copy into your own AI
  • Safe use: data, checking, deciding, informing
  • Pitfalls, effort and how to recognise success

With the training you get all 430 guides for as long as your access runs.

See the trainingOne-off per person, no subscription

Same approach, other use cases

10 more use cases follow the pattern “Letting machines & robots work autonomously”.

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LW-12 · Legal status 08.10.2026 · AI with a safety function in a machine or vehicle (Annex I, partly via sector-specific law)