> There's already automated computer assisted surgery, so is this really that far off? Is it desirable?

It's a question of cost and development effort versus utility. You can train a good picker/harvester within just a few weeks and that person can work the fields seasonally for decades while doing other productive things for the rest of the year.

Designing, building, deploying, and maintaining a machine complex enough to harvest asparagus, strawberries, and salad, however, is a very costly endeavour that yields very little benefit. The machines would cost billions to develop, millions to build, and are only usable for a short time of the year and for a very limited task.

A minimum-wage field worker can do the job faster and cheaper and a machine would basically need to run half a century just to pay for itself - and that doesn't even include the development costs.

Don't make the mistake to underestimate the amount of technology required to replace a human being for doing "simple tasks". Things that are simple for humans are incredibly hard for machines and vice versa.

I hope we get there. Things have gotten closer. The ideal is being able to harvest something like a strawberry without ruining it and it turns out to be rather difficult. With enough attention and investment, this is certainly a solvable problem. Let’s hope our attention spans get a little longer and we can stay focused on the need to innovate on food security when this is all over.

This pandemic will boost automation for sure. I hope, I can transform my side project to robotics startup afterwards. Current home office regulation saves me commuting time and I can do more development for myself.

Outdoor machinery is hard topic by itself. It’s not comparable to controlled environment where surgery robots operate. It’s permanent dirt, dust and changing weather conditions.