Quivering and hesitant, like a spoon-wielding toddler trying to eat soup without spilling it, the world's first raspberry-picking robot is attempting to harvest one of the fruits. After sizing it up for an age, the robot plucks the fruit with its gripping arm and gingerly deposits it into a waiting punnet. The whole process takes about a minute for a single berry. It seems like heavy going for a robot that cost £700,000 to develop but, if all goes to plan, this is the future of fruit-picking. Each robot will be able to pick more than 25,000 raspberries a day, outpacing human workers who manage about 15,000 in an eight-hour shift, according to Fieldwork Robotics, a spinout from the University of Plymouth.

A team at Harper Adams University are trying to grow and then harvest a field of barley using only robots and drones. If they succeed it will be a world first and we're following their progress. Last time we watched as the team from Harper Adams started to prepare for this year long experiment. They were using a small robot, not much bigger than a toy car, to refine the steering system they wanted to use. But at that point they were still waiting on their tractor to be delivered and couldn't find a suitable combine harvester. Since then things have moved on pretty quickly with triumphs and also some sleepless nights.