Abundant Robotics, an American startup run by a research institute in Silicon Valley, is gearing up for its first US apple picking season with its commercial standalone apple picker.

A California startup has been developing technology over the past few years and plans to use the commercial design of apple orchards in Washington State next season.

This follows from the world's first use of the harvester on the commercial apple tree culture in New Zealand earlier this year. The garden is owned by the country's largest fruit-exporting producer, T&G, whose parent company BayWa invested in Abundant Robotics two years ago.

The harvester, which uses the "unique" vacuum technology, is able to autonomously navigate, determining which apples are ripe, pick them and deliver them to buckets, and all this without damage to fruits or trees.

“We worked methodically on what happened in 2016 with early prototypes of a robotic apple harvester to get samples and then test projects for commercial harvesters that will be on the market,” said Dan Stear, CEO of Abundant Robotics.

The company is working with the apple industry to understand how to better customize existing gardens so that they work well with this technology. He added that the robotic harvester can work on various types of plantings in high-density gardens.

Commercial development of robots for harvesting apples is taking place in conditions of severe labor shortages in agriculture in many countries of the world. Such technology is likely to play an increasingly important role in the future.