The Basic Auto Gatherer can collect harvested crops in a 5x5 area around it. Its larger variant the Advanced Auto Gatherer has a larger pickup zone of 10x10.
The machine stores the crops in stacks of 40 (full box) ready for pickup. The boxes are then moved by farmers or prisoners into storage or export depending on what is configured in the logistics menu.
It activates every six game hours automatically and hoovers up all the picked vegetables/crops in the farming field or vegetable allotment.