Courtesy of DARPA Autonomous vehicles like this one in the DARPA Grand Challenge have sensor and software technology that led to the idea for a strawberry-harvesting machine.

They already are an important part of industry, from building solar modules to assembling cars, but in the coming years robots could be picking produce in groves and fields.

Tech devices are expected to someday replace people who harvest crops — if the challenges can be solved, particularly when it comes to fruit.

Fruit has to be picked in ways that won't damage the skin and at the right time of ripeness.

"Appearance matters," said Dave Kranz, of the California Farm Bureau. People go into the store and "oftentimes buy with their eyes."

For something like strawberries — Ventura County's top crop — the delicate picking process requires a trained eye and hand. Robots have been too vision-impaired and ham-fisted in the past to do it successfully.

But new technology is moving robotic harvesting closer to reality for some crops, and others, even those fragile strawberries, are being researched.

For scientists, the research holds exciting potential. For growers, it could mean more certain labor, but could require changing parts of the production process. For workers, it could lead to less backbreaking work, but fewer jobs.

Kranz said mechanization research picked up steam after a few years in which growers had trouble finding enough workers. Farmers have to be able to bring in their crops as they ripen, he said.

That has driven a push for more flexible immigration laws that would allow people to enter the country legally for seasonal work, as well as more interest in robotic harvesting, he said.

"We've got a system that is not sustainable for the long term," Kranz said.

The past year had more favorable weather and the downturn in construction was a boon to farming because more workers became available. But such events cannot be relied on, he said.

Citrus farmers have been looking at robotics as a reliable labor source for 30 years, said Ted Batkin, president of the California Citrus Research Board. The problem was that the mechanics never matched the computing power and camera capabilities.

Now, the computing power is there and cheaper than even a few years ago.

Scouting for ripeness

The Research Board has been financing work at a San Diego company, Vision Robotics Corp. During the past three years, the company has developed technology that can scan a tree and create a three-dimensional model, which locates the fruit and determines its size.

This "scout" device would be followed by a "picker" robot that does the harvesting.

The next steps are to write the software to handle all the data and to design the arms.

"We've proved we can do it," Batkin said. "Now, it's just a matter of cranking it out."

At current funding levels, the project could be complete in five to eight years, he said, but the Research Board is trying to raise funds to accomplish the goal in three years.

Other crops, from apples to grapes, could benefit.

Batkin said the research will yield much more than harvesting robots. Just the scanning — the scout — will provide a wealth of data that will guide how crops are grown.

As for jobs, Batkin emphasized that robotic harvesters would take over dangerous tasks while creating higher-value jobs for workers, such as operating, repairing and programming the machines.

"We're essentially changing the labor base of an entire industry to a higher level," he said.

The benefit of taking grueling work out of people's hands is countered by concern about the outcome for workers.

The human consequences

Roman Pinal, a researcher with the United Farm Workers of America, said organizations and universities researching and funding agricultural mechanization also should research the effect on farmworkers who would lose their jobs.

"When it does happen, if it does happen, there should be resources invested so we don't abandon a lot of these (farmworker) towns," he said.

Entire communities have been devastated by the mechanization of harvesting cotton and tomatoes, he said. And the human element is too often left out of the equation.

Pinal talks about conveyer machines now used in some strawberry fields to carry boxes of strawberries. People work faster with the machines, which reduces the need for field hands. They aren't spending their time walking a box of strawberries to a drop point; instead, they put boxes on a nearby conveyor.

Pinal said there is a concern that workers are no longer resting their backs while walking boxes out of the field, spending more time bent over picking. That could lead to some long-term health repercussions.

There is a lot of skill that goes into picking a strawberry or a bunch of grapes that robots cannot yet master, Pinal said. But planning needs to be done for when that does happen.

"I'm sure, somewhere in our future, there will be robots," Pinal said. "It's a matter of time."

Dan Legard, director of research for the California Strawberry Commission, said a functional strawberry-picking machine may be decades away.

Some unique problems

The commission is in its second year of funding a robotic harvesting project. As with the citrus, the first step is developing the vision recognition, with the development of the robotic arm to follow.

But strawberry work has different obstacles.

"Because it's so different from other crops, we're probably going to have to develop different technologies," he said. The commission is providing seed money in the hope that it will generate future research.

Legard said the way strawberries are grown may have to change to accommodate robotic harvesting.

Joseph Wickham of Robotic Harvesting LLC is leading the strawberry-harvesting research. The Simi Valley resident has a background in agriculture and business.

Wickham had his light bulb moment while watching friends compete in the DARPA Grand Challenge, a U.S. Defense Department event that calls on teams to create unmanned vehicles that can find their way along a desert course.

"I realized some of the technology used in the DARPA Grand Challenge could be reapplied to agriculture," he said.

The vehicles rely on cameras and sensors, as well as sophisticated software to "see" the road and navigate around obstacles.

Translate that to a harvesting robot and it could use sensors and software to recognize if strawberries are ripe and pick them, he said.

"It seems like an ideal time to work on this type of technology," Wickham said.