Harvest greenhouse tomatoes by robot. Picking is repetitive work in hot, humid glasshouses and growers struggle to hire for it; greenhouses supply about half of the fresh tomatoes Americans eat.
DeployStage 4 of 5
Commercial fleet harvesting at Dutch grower Westburg since late 2025; systems also run in Canada.
Updated 13 Nov 2025·Checked 11 Oct·0 updates this week
Speed against human pickersEarly prototypes needed 25 seconds per tomato against a person's one second; commercial use depends on closing that gap.
New crops need new handsCucumbers and peppers hang differently; Four Growers is building a non-suction gripper for its cucumber robot.
Physics limits
Fruit hidden in foliageCameras need a clear line of sight. Tomatoes behind leaves or other trusses are missed or need extra moves, which caps the share of fruit a robot can harvest in one pass.
Works only in tidy, structured cropsGreenhouse vines are trained into straight, uniform rows. Bushy outdoor crops lack that structure, so the same approach does not carry over easily to open fields.
How it works
4 parts
See
Stereo cameras build a 3D view
Four stereo cameras see the vine in depth; the AI rates each tomato's ripeness and health.
Plan
A path around stems and leaves
Software picks the order of fruit and plans each arm move so the gripper reaches the tomato without hitting the plant.
Pick
Suction instead of fingers
A vacuum gripper takes hold of the fruit and pulls it free, avoiding the bruises that squeezing causes.
Collect
Patented cart and crop maps
A secondary cart system handles the picked fruit; scans of every plant feed yield maps and harvest forecasts.
Pittsburgh startup whose robots pick ripe tomatoes in commercial greenhouses, using stereo cameras, AI and a suction gripper on an industrial arm. Its robots work in the Netherlands and Canada.
Raised a $9M Series A in Dec 2024 led by Basset Capital ($15M total).
Robots harvest at Westburg (Netherlands) and Nature Fresh Farms (Canada).
Claims up to 50% labour savings; a cucumber robot without suction is next.
