Long post but once I started looking into it I found it fairly interesting. Apples are bigger business than I thought.
It would definitely be suited to a particular type of operation. If implemented it could do to the small orchard what modern thresher/combine units did to small grain farmers. If the same machine could be tooled to harvest several fruit crops (say mango, citrus, apples, avocado) then 1 mil would be cheap. Think of australia. Broad acre fruit farming is common here, generally on fairly flat terrain. Trellised apple orchards are more the rule than the exception. Our labor costs are high. 40%-60% of the crop is wastage because the local market can only handle so much b grade fruit, and the price for low grade fruit is too low to consider picking and shipping for processing. Last time I was in western Australia for the apple harvest there were piles of low grade fruit double overhead the size of tennis courts everywhere. If the automated picker could decrease fruit damage by getting them sorted and on trays without risking crush damage in bins, that would increase export quality volume right away. This is where the industry wants to go because the local market is saturated. I never realized how many apples the world grows but have a look at this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_apple_production . I think there is volume for mass production of robots. Can that china figure be right?
Between mango, apple and citrus that's year round picking. If you run these units like the automated harvesting companies do on broad acre soy/rice/corn/grain.
1mil @ 6.5% over 10 years about 140k a year plus 5% equipment value for parts and repair and 5k insurance = 195k a year
Pick 250 days, 20 hrs a day. 105 days travel and maintenance = 50000 man hour equivalents.
That prices a machine hour at about 4 dollars. Write off interest costs in the business, plus write offs on the depreciation schedule for plant and equipment. If you increase export quality fruit volume and cut wastage, crop volume and grade will increase. You could probably make your margin on the decreased wastage and increased export volume alone. That still leaves an 11 dollar gap assuming $15/hr for migrant labour. Early adopters would make some cash, then I imagine apple prices would crater leaving only the automated producers at a new lower floor price and normal business margins.
Long post but the ROI on equipment in my business is a fraction of that, but it still pays the bills. Automation is a threat in my line of work, so usually pretty interested in where it's at. Question is will it really be an improvement when all the unskilled jobs go overseas or to robots and the locals try the fill the gap with consumer credit and mortgage debt.