A hulking, nameless creature lumbers among the citrus trees, its eight arms and eyes in constant motion, searching for its prey: oranges.
Part robot, part tractor, the contraption is an unusual combination of one internal-combustion engine, four rubber tires, eight digital cameras, eight electronic arms and an excruciating number of computer algorithms that choreograph every movement. Its metal arms maneuver among the branches, where "eyes" spot the fruit and suction-cup "hands" grasp them even more gently than human hands, which is what they are designed to replace. In fact, just one human finger is involved in this entire enterprise, for the thing also needs no driver. The robot sets its own course and speed, relying on a human only to push the on/off button on a remote control.
For now, this machine exists exclusively in a virtual citrus orchard on a computer screen in an unassuming second-story office in Sorrento Valley, San Diego's corridor of high-technology entrepreneurship. It was conceived by two Massachusetts Institute of Technology-educated inventers, Bret Wallach and Tony Koselka, who founded Vision Robotics Corp., a 4-year-old company whose most recent success was the invention of a robot vacuum cleaner capable of cleaning the carpet by itself while dodging table legs and other obstacles.
The company's next project is this robotic orange picker, which must treat oranges with enough care to leave them unmarked and suitable for the produce section of the grocery store, and must do so cheaply enough to beat the going price for hand labor, which Wallach says is about a penny an orange. Within four years, they predict, their invention could make the leap from the computer screen to the test track, where it will pluck orange Nerf balls from a potted plant, and then to real groves of oranges.
At the moment, though, harvesting most fresh produce remains an anachronism in an era of computer-driven combines, genetically modified plants and crop yields monitored by global positioning satellites. And that's especially apparent in California, where about half of the fruit and vegetables (as measured by sales volume) are harvested by hand.
