First they came...

If robotics enthusiasts are even mildly successful in their latest endeavor, strawberry pickers will soon be out of a job.  A company is testing prototypes of a robotic picker which uses cameras and GPS technology to locate each strawberry on a plant, assess its ripeness and defects and decide to pick it in a matter of microseconds.  Until now, strawberries were the poster child for manual labor.  Human beings were the ultimate arbiter of ripeness and no machine could be as gentle...until now!  I was a strawberry picker during many a summer morning in my misspent youth.  Trying to move the leaves aside, gently picking the berries and not getting dirt on them was the mantra from dawn til noon.  I'm sure there are many small farms where child labor and migrants will continue to pick berries until the mechanisms are scaled to smaller acreage.  But the majority of supermarket fruit will soon be picked by robots.  When even illegal immigrants lose their jobs to mechanization, the future is looking bleak.  When will the robots come for your job?