content: Like with most automation the fundamental goal is to remove humans from the picture, not to augment or even improve their performance. Agriculture generally doesn't have to pay minimum wage, but they still do pay several dollars per hour per laborer. And it takes a lot of labor to pick millions of apples. It's also an important step in completely automating the farming process from sowing to reaping, and even cleaning and transporting. In the not that distant future we'll be able to have farms that are completely self automated. Yeah like you mention it's almost surprising this hadn't been invented fairly long ago. Red apples on a green/brown background are basically a testing target as far as computer vision goes. The fact it's the real scenario is just really fortunate.