For fruits, manual labour is a large factor but not the only limiting factor. We Could see fragile fruits drop in price with good robotics, but not below other more mass-harvestable fruits such as oranges or nuts (that can be shaken from trees with tractors)
Robotics within farming is often more about improving what is already being done in a more sustainable way. The primary benefit of monocropping is easier automation and larger machines. Cheap and good robots that can manually look after individual plants allow a more dynamic growth environment and more control over pesticide and weedkilling applications.
But I think we are still a ways off before this starts to affect the market noticeably. Robots are still too slow and too expensive, or so I heard from asking a local strawberry producer who looked into what was commercially available.
Another way to "solve" the problem for fragile fruits: stop trying to make them at scale. Let people them grow by themselves on their home gardens, or have community gardens/greenhouses that are jointly managed by a school/library...
Blueberries:
Blueberries (or as we northern Europeans call them, American blueberries) are planted once and yield a sizable, easily harvestable, 0-maintenance crop each year. We have 12 bushes in a 4x4-meter corner of our garden. At their peak season, they yield almost a litre of berries each day for a week.
Raspberries:
My grandad used to have a vast number of raspberry bushes mindfully nurtured to give unfathomable harvests each year, but they are a bit more maintenance. He had 20 or more bushes, if I recall.
Strawberries:
Strawberries are a massive pain. They are difficult to weed and need to be replanted with the seedlings each second year for an optimal crop.
Plums:
Fun on paper... But it can be too productive to the point of absurdity. 20 plums... tasty. 20 buckets of plums and mushy sugar water in the whole yard? Less fun.
Cherries:
Banger pie and jam... but I think 20 pies is a tad excessive. We mabie pluck 5% of the yield each year; the rest is left to birds to and replant in our neighbour's bushes.
Nice if you can convince people that 1) putting yourself into time-poverty to earn more money is not the right thing to do, and 2) fragile fruits should be available mostly when they're in season somewhere within a few hundred km of your location.
(I'm not disagreeing with either point btw, I think it's a better way to live, but good luck convincing the wider populous).
One's idea of "time-poverty" is another's idea of "doing things with a higher purpose".
We live in a world where we simultaneously (a) can do basically anything with a glass rectangle in our pockets and (b) do not stop feeling a sense of boredom and dread. Re-learning how to do some things that take time and do not satisfy our immediate sense of gratification would be a good thing.
Robotics within farming is often more about improving what is already being done in a more sustainable way. The primary benefit of monocropping is easier automation and larger machines. Cheap and good robots that can manually look after individual plants allow a more dynamic growth environment and more control over pesticide and weedkilling applications.
But I think we are still a ways off before this starts to affect the market noticeably. Robots are still too slow and too expensive, or so I heard from asking a local strawberry producer who looked into what was commercially available.