The world's first robotic harvest happened in an apple orchard in NZ

A major milestone for the apple industry was reached this spring in a remote New Zealand orchard: the world’s first commercial robotic harvest. The harvest started in February and will end in late April or May in one of New Zealand’s largest orchards, T&G Global, with a machine built and operated by Abundant Robotics of Hayward, Calif.Using robots to replace human pickers has been a decades-long dream of the apple industry. Robots can save millions of dollars in labor costs and alleviate picker shortages that have forced many orchards to hire expensive foreign guestworkers. Just last year, Washington state’s $2.5 billion apple industry hired 24,862 guestworkers.