E-Series vs B8 Harvester
Two harvesting machines, one verified table. Every figure below is sourced and dated; vendor claims are labelled and kept apart from independent results.
Spanish robotic strawberry harvester from Huelva with up to 24 independent picking arms that grip and cut the stem so fruit is never touched, guided by colour/infrared depth sensors and LiDAR. A long-running pioneer (field work in Huelva and California, early Driscoll's trials) — but Agrobot itself still labels the E-Series pre-commercial and 'not for sale, project on development' as of 2026, with thin recent public evidence of commercial deployments.
Best for: Watching, not buying — large strawberry growers tracking robotic harvest maturity; Agrobot remains one of the longest-running dedicated strawberry-harvest programmes in Europe.US (Tampa/Plant City, FL) autonomous strawberry harvester — 16 independently working picking robots on a wide self-propelled chassis span six beds (picking the middle four), using stereo/AI vision to identify ripe fruit and soft clamp-and-cut end effectors to pick without hand contact. Harvest CROO offers it as a harvesting service (lease + operations), not equipment for sale. In April 2025 the company announced field trials at commercial-scale operations (grower-investor Wish Farms) reached performance "on par with human harvesting," but there is no public evidence yet of general commercial availability beyond its investor-grower partner farms.
Best for: Large-scale Florida-style strawberry grower-shippers (the kind already invested in the company, e.g. Wish Farms, Naturipe, Driscoll's-aligned growers) facing a shrinking seasonal hand-picking workforce, who can work with Harvest CROO's service/lease model rather than buying hardware outright.| E-Series Verified 2026-07-17 | B8 Harvester Verified 2026-07-19 | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Task | Harvesting | Harvesting |
| Autonomy | Fully autonomous | Fully autonomous |
| Country of origin | Spain | United States |
| Availability | Pilot / limited | Pilot / limited |
| EU market | CE-marked | Pending |
| Lead time | Not disclosed | Not disclosed |
| Last verified | 2026-07-17 | 2026-07-19 |
| Specifications | ||
| Power source | Electric-powered platform | Diesel-electric hybrid self-propelled platform — most drive motors are electric, powered from an onboard diesel fuel supply (reported for the B5-generation platform; current B8 powertrain not restated in public materials, no evidence of a change) |
| Required tractor power | Self-propelled platform straddling raised beds | Not required (self-propelled platform, not tractor-pulled) |
| Dimensions | Not disclosed | Approx. 32 ft long x 18 ft wide (reported for the platform's commercial-prototype generation) |
| Weight | Not disclosed | Not disclosed |
| Min farm size | Not disclosed | Not disclosed (deployed to date with large commercial grower-shippers, e.g. Wish Farms' ~600-acre Florida operation) |
| Productivity | Not disclosed | Up to 8 acres/day in 20-hour shifts at full commercial scale — company states this replaces the work of 25-30+ hand pickers; picks a full 16-robot pass on a plant in roughly 8 seconds, indexing to the next plant in about 1.5 seconds |
| Max speed | Not disclosed | About 3 inches/second forward travel while picking |
| Sensors | Short-range integrated colour + infrared depth sensors per arm; LiDAR; onboard GPUs for real-time ripeness assessment | 360-degree LiDAR for navigation/obstacle avoidance; dual GPS for sub-plant positioning; onboard stereo cameras and an AI/machine-vision system (recently upgraded to current-generation NVIDIA chips) to assess ripeness |
| Price & model | ||
| Price (EUR) | Not disclosed | Not disclosed |
| Native price | Not disclosed | Not disclosed |
| Business model | Not for sale — pre-commercial development programme; historical trials with growers in Huelva/Badajoz (ES) and Oxnard/Watsonville (California), including early Driscoll's trials | Harvesting-as-a-service — Harvest CROO leases the harvester and operates it for the grower (piece-rate-style pricing was described for an earlier generation), rather than selling the machine; no public list price found |
| Ongoing cost | Not applicable (not commercially available) | Not disclosed — service/lease terms are negotiated directly with growers |
| Key outcome | ||
| Best verified result | Fruit contact during harvest Stem grip-and-cut picking — fruit placed in field containers without being touched · vendor | Harvest crew size for a given field One B8 Harvester (16 picking robots) covering up to 8 acres/day in a 20-hour shift · vendor |
| EU context | ||
| CE marking | Not applicable yet — machine not placed on the market (manufacturer states not for sale) | Not applicable — no evidence of EU market placement; US-only operations found |
| Machinery Regulation | Would fall under Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 autonomous-machine provisions if commercialised | Not applicable — not placed on the EU market |
| CAP subsidy | Harvest automation — not directly tied to CAP eco-schemes | Not applicable — US-based service, outside EU CAP |
"—" means the manufacturer has not disclosed the figure; we never estimate silently. Model either machine's payback with your own numbers on its ROI calculator page.