There’s a lot riding on farmers’ ability to fight weeds, which can strangle crops and destroy yields. To protect crops, farmers have two options: They can spray herbicides that pollute the environment and harm human health, or they can hire more workers.

Unfortunately, both choices are becoming less tenable. Herbicide resistance is a growing problem in crops around the world, while widespread labor shortages have hit the agricultural sector particularly hard.

Now the startup FarmWise, co-founded by Sébastien Boyer, is giving farmers a third option. The company has developed autonomous weeding robots that use artificial intelligence to cut out weeds while leaving crops untouched.

The company’s first robot, fittingly called the Titan—picture a large tractor that makes use of a trailer in lieu of a driver’s seat—uses machine vision to distinguish weeds from crops, including leafy greens, cauliflower, artichokes, and tomatoes while snipping weeds with sub-inch precision.

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