driving through Oxnard one day, I came up with the same idea. mount image sensors to read the color of the fruit, if it registers red enough, a padded gripper extends and grabs it. problem is I don't have the means to market or develop it so 2 years later someone else makes it.

Very cool idea! I wonder how many other fruits and vegetables can have robot harvesters. 

good question, grapes come to mind but field berries should be easiest to implement while the pressure of the gripper needs special calibration to make sure it doesn't destroy the fruit. this has been solved before at several universities with robots and drones.

Grapes and field berries would be marvelous. 

And on the path to bigger things like tomatoes I'd imagine.