I worked on strawberry picking robots for a few years as a field robotics engineer. I don't know about Australia but for American fruit growers and to a lesser extent, British ones, the tasks that are actually economically valuable are shockingly hard technically.
Picking strawberries at a rate that beats human pickers, given the endless amount of variables, is insanely hard. Why not pick another task like data collection, you ask, because its just not important enough. So what you have is a bunch of techbros making SISP's and attracting VC's who are hopped up on SaaS sugar rushes, the tech doesn't work and the company folds, and the farmers get disillusioned and less amicable to the next entreprenuer.
Picking strawberries at a rate that beats human pickers, given the endless amount of variables, is insanely hard. Why not pick another task like data collection, you ask, because its just not important enough. So what you have is a bunch of techbros making SISP's and attracting VC's who are hopped up on SaaS sugar rushes, the tech doesn't work and the company folds, and the farmers get disillusioned and less amicable to the next entreprenuer.
In 2025, we're in like the third cycle of this.