Gen 5 Strawberry Harvesting Robot 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.
Cambridge-built autonomous strawberry picker running commercially as picking-as-a-service — 50+ robots deployed in the UK and internationally, picking tabletop strawberries by night and day. Raised £14m in July 2026 to scale the fleet.
Best for: Tabletop strawberry growers on pipe rails (≥55 cm spacing) in the UK, Australia or California who cannot recruit seasonal pickers.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.| Gen 5 Strawberry Harvesting Robot Verified 2026-07-16 | B8 Harvester Verified 2026-07-19 | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Task | Harvesting | Harvesting |
| Autonomy | Fully autonomous | Fully autonomous |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom | United States |
| Availability | Available now | Pilot / limited |
| EU market | Pending | Pending |
| Lead time | Not disclosed | Not disclosed |
| Last verified | 2026-07-16 | 2026-07-19 |
| Specifications | ||
| Power source | Battery-electric · 8 h swappable Li-ion, ~400 W draw | 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 | Not required (self-propelled on pipe rails/rows) | Not required (self-propelled platform, not tractor-pulled) |
| Dimensions | 2.4 × 0.7 × 1.8 m | Approx. 32 ft long x 18 ft wide (reported for the platform's commercial-prototype generation) |
| Weight | 400 kg | 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 | ~200 kg/day per robot · 80–90% extraction rate · machine-made waste <2.5% | 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 | Stereo vision picking arms · 5-camera onboard grading unit · onboard lighting for night work | 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 | Picking-as-a-service (RaaS); ~£30k/unit hardware figure reported but not a public list price | 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 | Service contract per harvest season (terms not disclosed) | Not disclosed — service/lease terms are negotiated directly with growers |
| Key outcome | ||
| Best verified result | Picking labour Robot picks ~200 kg/day, up to 16 h with battery swap incl. night shifts · 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 | No CE marking published — operates in UK (UKCA regime), AU and US | Not applicable — no evidence of EU market placement; US-only operations found |
| Machinery Regulation | Not verified for EU market placement | Not applicable — not placed on the EU market |
| CAP subsidy | Not applicable — service not offered in the EU | 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.