Picking fruit and vegetables by hand is back breaking work, often at low pay. But a robot designed by an international team of scientists could make this a thing of the past within a decade. The device, dubbed Thorvald, is able to provide farmers with invaluable information about their land and produce. A nimble farming machine called Thorvald (pictured) could soon become a common sight on working farms. One of the UK's largest produce companies is reported to have invested funding to allow the robot to be mass produced Thorvald was built to to perform a wide variety of agricultural tasks. Its lightweight design makes manoeuvring over uneven ground no problem and it is agile enough to navigate between rows of crops without touching plants.