You use a touch screen to place your order choosing from a menu of recipes or designing your own. The machine calculates the number of calories per salad and drops the veggies into a bowl in less than a minute. There is less human contact with the food as the salads are assembled out of precut vegetables stored in refrigerated canisters hence minimizing food safety concerns. Plans are being made for the robots to produce healthy meals in convenience stores, airports, hotels, hospitals and universities. www.chowbotics.com

In a greenhouse in Belgium, a small robot moves through rows of strawberries growing on trays suspended above the ground, using machine vision to locate ripe, flawless berries, then reaching up with a 3D-printed hand to gently pluck each berry and place it in a basket for sale. If it feels that a berry isn?t ready for harvest, the robot estimates the date it will be ready for it to return and pick it. It?s a test of a system that Octinion, the R&D company building the robot, believes could replace traditional strawberry farming and harvesting. https://www.fastcompany.com/40473583/this-strawberry-picking-robot-gently-picks-the-ripest-berries-with-its-robo-hand?

Turn a bottle into a self-watering hydroponic herb garden. By providing a way for plants to water themselves for up to a month at a time, it means you don't have to! Launching on Kickstarter May 22. Sign up here for campaign updates and early-bird discounts. www.geturbanleaf.com    

UrbanYou is an online platform connecting busy people with top-quality, pre-screened independent service professionals. They offer home cleaning, handyman and garden services with a 60-second booking process, secure payment, and satisfaction guarantee, https://www.urbanyou.com.au