{"id":30780,"date":"2026-04-13T05:59:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T10:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/?p=30780"},"modified":"2026-04-13T05:59:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T10:59:28","slug":"no-more-day-laborers-or-manual-harvesting-goodbye-to-traditional-harvesting-hello-to-robots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/no-more-day-laborers-or-manual-harvesting-goodbye-to-traditional-harvesting-hello-to-robots\/30780\/","title":{"rendered":"No more day laborers or manual harvesting: goodbye to traditional harvesting, hello to robots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Washington State University researchers are building a new kind of farm helper, one that does not get tired, does not call in sick, and might even help save water. Their latest prototypes<\/a> range from a soft, inflatable robotic arm that can pick apples to an AI vision system that \u201cfinds\u201d strawberries hiding under leaves and clears a path using gentle puffs of air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\n

Read More: Goodbye to traditional cement: seaweed could forever change the most widely used material on the planet<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The big idea is simple. If farms cannot reliably hire enough people for pruning, thinning, and harvest, automation has to pick up some of the slack. In Washington, where agriculture is a multibillion dollar industry, the worker pipeline has been tightening for years, and researchers say that is pushing growers toward a future where humans and machines share the workload.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soft robots for apples<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Designing a robot that can harvest fruit sounds straightforward until you picture a rigid metal arm bumping into tree limbs all day. That is why WSU engineers built an inflatable apple picking arm that is soft by design, aiming to reduce damage to both trees and fruit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\n

Read More: Say goodbye to blind watering: this new robot knows which trees need water and which don’t<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

According to the university\u2019s reporting, the arm weighs under 50 pounds and costs about $5,500, and it can identify and pick an apple in roughly 25 seconds. Do the quick math and that is about 140 apples an hour if it could work nonstop, but real orchards are messy, and speed is still the big hurdle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What makes this approach stand out is the focus on \u201cgentle\u201d engineering rather than brute force. In practical terms, careful handling can mean fewer bruised apples that never make it from the bin to the produce aisle. That is a sustainability win that rarely gets headlines, but it adds up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding strawberries under the canopy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Strawberries bring a different kind of headache because the fruit is often tucked under leaves and low to the ground. WSU\u2019s solution uses AI vision that combines multiple images to locate berries, then a small blower sends light bursts of air to move leaves out of the way before soft silicone \u201cfingers\u201d pluck the fruit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\n

Read More: A storm uncovers two 10-million-year-old whales, and the discovery surprises Europe<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

That detail matters because earlier strawberry robots often worked in controlled setups where berries hang down neatly. Out in the field, everything is partially hidden, uneven, and changing by the hour as plants grow and sunlight shifts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also a reminder of how much \u201cinvisible skill\u201d human pickers bring to the job. Spotting ripeness, reaching into a canopy without snapping stems, and moving quickly without crushing fruit is hard to replicate, which is why WSU researchers keep describing this as automation that works alongside people, not a full replacement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Water saved without yield loss<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One of the most striking results in WSU\u2019s work is not a robot arm at all, but irrigation software. At the WSU Smart Apple Orchard, researchers tested automated irrigation that uses weather and water data to adjust how much and when to irrigate, including decisions about cooling fruit and canopies during hot summer periods. In some trials, they cut water use by up to about 50% without hurting yields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\n

Read More: Goodbye to the bear as a hunter: a new study reveals that more and more populations are shifting toward a plant-based diet<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

In related WSU tree fruit reporting<\/a>, a precision irrigation setup saved 52.4% of water compared with soil moisture scheduling, while also reporting higher estimated effective yield and much higher water use efficiency. Results like that help explain why growers are paying attention, especially in regions where every irrigation decision can feel like a stress test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not a niche issue. The U.S. Geological Survey reports<\/a> that, in 2015, irrigation withdrawals accounted for 42% of total U.S. freshwater withdrawals, making it one of the biggest pieces of the national water puzzle. When irrigation tech can cut water use dramatically in some settings, that is a big deal for rivers, aquifers, and long term farm resilience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why farms are running short of hands<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Automation is already common in broad acre crops like wheat, where GPS guided tractors can do much of the work with limited human input. Orchards are different because apples, cherries, grapes, and other perennial fruits can require labor across the seasons, not just at harvest time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\n

Read More: Stephen Hawking: \u201cI don’t think humanity will survive the next thousand years, at least not without expanding into space\u201d<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

WSU points to a sharp contraction in Washington\u2019s farm workforce, citing Census based figures<\/a> that show hired farm labor declining 23% from 2017 to 2022, while the migrant labor force dropped 37% over the same period. The same report notes that 3,700 farms went out of business in Washington between 2017 and 2022, with some owners citing labor shortages as a factor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nationally, the pressure is also financial. USDA data<\/a> shows that for fruit and tree nut operations, wages, salaries, and contract labor costs represent about 40% of production expenses, far higher than the average across all farms. When labor is that big a slice of the budget, disruptions do not stay on the farm, they show up in supply and, eventually, in what shoppers pay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rebuilding orchards for machines<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One quiet theme running through WSU\u2019s work is that robots may require farms to change shape. Researchers have pruned demonstration orchards so trees grow more like \u201cwalls,\u201d creating corridors where robotic systems can move and work more predictably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\n

Read More: Goodbye to pollution in Beijing: The city breaks its record for clean air and reaches a historic milestone that has surprised the whole world<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

They are also using drones to gather data on crop stress, water use, and plant needs, feeding that information into machine learning tools. Think of it as turning the orchard into a living dataset, where the goal is earlier warning signs and more precise decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lav Khot, a WSU professor focused on agricultural automation, has described a future where systems blend weather, soil, and plant performance data into automated decision making operated by growers. \u201cThe stress we used to have to grow things, I think AI can help to mitigate that stress on humans,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The road from demo to daily use<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For all the promise, WSU is clear that harvesting robots are not yet ready to become routine equipment. The machines can perform tasks effectively, but not quickly enough, and scaling from a lab or demo orchard to thousands of real world acres is where technology tends to get tested the hardest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\n

Read More: The beaches of Cape Verde seem to be teeming with loggerhead sea turtles like never before, but a 17-year study reveals the worrying side of this phenomenon: although they arrive earlier, they lay fewer eggs, nest less frequently, and take up to twice as long to return<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

There is also a bigger sustainability question hiding in plain sight. If farms adopt more sensors, robotics, and AI tools, the benefits can include water savings and better targeting of farm operations, but the footprint of manufacturing, powering, and maintaining all that hardware has to be part of the conversation too. That is why the most realistic near term path looks like \u201chuman plus machine,\u201d not farms run entirely by robots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the day, this is about keeping food production stable while labor markets and water constraints tighten at the same time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Washington State University researchers are building a new kind of farm helper, one that does not get tired, does not … <\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":30788,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","resize-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30780"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30786,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30780\/revisions\/30786"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}