Strawberry-picking robots could collect enough fruit to supply tennis-lovers at Wimbledon for one week. The'Rubion' is programmed to only pick'perfect' strawberries, with just 14 machines being able to gather enough to keep the tournament topped up for seven days. Its clasping mechanism, which leaves the fruit bruise-free, picks and packages a strawberry every five seconds, resulting in up to 360kg of the berry a day. Rubion even has a built in'camera' uses sensors to ensure only the ripest fruit makes it through. Strawberry-picking robots could collect enough fruit to supply tennis-lovers at Wimbledon for one week.

With strawberry picking season well under way - but migrant labour in short supply in several countries - we look at the various robots being developed around the world to help producers harvest this most popular fruit. Next time you buy strawberries take a look a good look in the punnet. Do the berries still have the stem attached or has it been plucked off leaving only the green hat of leaves called the calyx? You may not think that matters, but it's a key consideration for growers as they contemplate the merits of a range of robotic prototypes that promise to pick strawberries as fast and as carefully as humans. Whether the berry is plucked or whether the stalk is snipped through and kept attached is one critical difference between the concepts that Spanish, Belgian, British and US engineers are testing, ready to roll out in fields as soon as next year.

The strawberry-picking robot enters a field near Duette, Fla. The strawberry-picking robot enters a field near Duette, Fla. Robots have taken over many of America's factories. They can explore the depths of the ocean, and other planets. But can they pick a strawberry? "You kind of learn, when you get into this -- it's really hard to match what humans can do," says Bob Pitzer, an expert on robots and co-founder of a company called Harvest CROO Robotics.