Just off a quiet highway in the middle of nowhere in Manatee County, there’s a machine that just might change the farming industry forever.

“The intention of the machine here is actually to replace a 50 person picking crew,” said Bob Pitzer, CTO of Harvest CROO Robotics.

Bob Pitzer is the mastermind behind the machine.

It’s a patent-pending prototype, a strawberry picking robot popping the fruit off the plants as it rolls through the field. The company is testing the robot at a farm in Manatee County.

“The strawberry industry has been rolling back how many acres they plant because they can’t get enough labor to pick the strawberries," he said.

Not enough workers in the field, means fewer more expensive strawberries for the consumer.

So to combat this labor shortage, Pitzer and Plant City-based Wish Farms teamed up. They thought, if you’re short on real pickers, why not build them yourself.

“It makes us more efficient when trying to remove the strawberries off the plant," he said.

Pitzer said the prototype is at least three years away, and it won’t completely remove human pickers from the field right away.

He believes it is going to change the industry as a whole.

Wish Farms says $750 million per year is spent on strawberry picking labor.