COOL: How a Robot Can Sort 2 Tons of Grapes in 12 Minutes.

Each morning Leveque feeds 200 perfect grapes to the machine, which digitally photographs them and forms a kind of Platonic ideal of a grape. Then the sorting starts. Gobs of grapes pour in and the machine snaps a picture of each, 10,000 frames per second, comparing every one to Leveque’s nonpareil. Acceptable? Go on, become wine. Subpar? A quick stream of air blasts it out of the lineup and into obscurity. In action, the machine sounds like popcorn popping.

“Most wineries can sort about two tons an hour, using 15 human sorters,” Leveque says. Hall processes the same amount in twelve minutes, with zero human sorters. And that’s just half of the appeal.