Robotic Harvesting of Tomato in Protected Cultivation: A Review of Crop‐Specific Challenges, Technologies and Future Directions

Tomato harvesting remains one of the most labour‐intensive operations in horticultural production, particularly in protected cultivation systems where fruit maturity, cluster structure, canopy occlusion and damage‐sensitive handling strongly influence marketable yield and postharvest quality. Robotic harvesting has been widely investigated as a potential solution, but its practical adoption depends not only on advances in machine vision, manipulation and end‐effector design, but also on how well these technologies respond to crop‐specific biological and production‐system constraints. Using a structured scoping approach covering publications from 1990 to 2026, 54 studies were included in the qualitative synthesis. This review evaluates progress in fruit detection and maturity assessment, three‐dimensional localisation, navigation and motion planning, low‐damage detachment, end‐effector design, integrated harvesting performance, fruit quality preservation and adaptation of production systems for robotic operation. Two principal outputs are proposed: an integrated metric framework linking engineering performance with horticultural outcomes and a recommended minimum reporting dataset covering crop and canopy conditions, robotic configuration, performance definitions, fruit damage, postharvest quality and commercial indicators. Together, these outputs are intended to improve cross‐study comparability and support the transition from experimental prototypes towards robot‐ready and commercially relevant tomato‐production systems.