Can strawberry-picking robots save California’s growers?
In a strawberry field surrounded by strawberry fields on the outskirts of Santa Maria, a team of robots have been picking berries all summer. Each robot, made by a Colorado company called Tortuga AgTech, trundles between the elevated beds on rugged wheels, then stops in front of a plant. An articulated arm maneuvers its sensor array among the leaves; machine vision software scours the sensor data in search of ripe berries. … But the team behind Tortuga — and some longtime experts in California’s $2-billion strawberry industry — see agricultural robots … as the only way that an industry sitting on the intersecting fault lines of climate change, water rights, labor struggles, land use and chemical regulation can adapt and survive.
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