Robots powered by artificial intelligence could farm more sustainably than traditional agriculture, claims one Silicon Valley company. Agricultural technology start-up Iron Ox says that its mission is to make the global agriculture sector carbon negative. And they have just secured €47 million ($53 million) from investors including Bill Gates. CEO Brandon Alexander can't be accused of lacking experience when it comes to food production. He spent every summer of his childhood on his grandparent's farm, picking cotton, potatoes, or peanuts under the Texas sun.

In the corner of an Ohio field, a laser-armed robot inches through a sea of onions, zapping weeds as it goes. This field doesn't belong to a dystopian future but to Shay Myers, a third-generation farmer whose TikTok posts about farming life often go viral. He began using two robots last year to weed his 12-hectare (30-acre) crop. The robots – which are nearly three metres long, weigh 4,300kg (9,500lb), and resemble a small car – clamber slowly across a field, scanning beneath them for weeds which they then target with laser bursts. "For microseconds you watch these reddish color bursts. You see the weed, it lights up as the laser hits, and it's just gone," said Myers.

These Visionary companies have a big idea and are well on their way to achieving it, although it isn't always an easy road for any really innovative technology. In the case of Cruise, that meant testing self driving vehicles on the streets of San Francisco, one of the hardest driving environments in the world. Some of our Visionary Awards go to companies who are opening up new market applications for robotics, such as Built Robotics in construction, Dishcraft in food services, Embark in self-driving trucks, Iron Ox in urban agriculture and Zipline in drone delivery. Some are building tools or platforms that the entire robotics industry can benefit from, such as Agility Robotics, Covariant, Formant, RobustAI and Zoox. The companies in our Good Robot Awards also show that'technologies built for us, have to be built by us'.

Vegetables sold by California-based startup Iron Ox might be organic, but the farmer cultivating them is far from it. The company behind the robotic and hydroponic farming system is now taking the first step towards going to market in California. According to a report from The Verge, Iron Ox is partnering with Bay Area produce purveyors Bianchini's Market, to put several varieties of its robot-grown leaf greens on shelves for the first time. For now, Iron Ox's greens will come in the three different varieties: red-veined sorrel, Genevieve basil, and baby lettuce, at prices that are competitive with those at shoppers' average Whole Foods. Iron Ox will begin selling its robot-farmed produce in California for the first time.

A bowl of salad is a beautiful collection of human ingenuity. The lettuce requires its own specialized agricultural process, as do the tomatoes, as do the garbanzo beans. Then comes the simple act of pulling these ingredients out of the ground, a challenge our dextrous human hands complete with ease. This is why roboticists are creating crop-specific machines to harvest fruits and veggies. There's the robot that harvests lettuce with a knife made of water.

When we think about automation, we often imagine robots just doing the work of humans. Our mental image is of an android in overalls, clocking in with a lunchbox full of oil and bolts, and grabbing a hammer. But that's not what happens. The reality is much messier, and the process of automation is one of compromise and incremental progress. Agritech startup Iron Ox is the perfect example of this.

Brandon Alexander would like to introduce you to Angus, the farmer of the future. He's heavyset, weighing in at nearly 1,000 pounds, not to mention a bit slow. But he's strong enough to hoist 800-pound pallets of maturing vegetables and can move them from place to place on his own. Sure, Angus is a robot. But don't hold that against him, even if he looks more like a large tanning bed than C-3PO.

Brandon Alexander would like to introduce you to Angus, the farmer of the future. He's heavyset, weighing in at nearly 1,000 pounds, not to mention a bit slow. But he's strong enough to hoist 800-pound pallets of maturing vegetables and can move them from place to place on his own. Sure, Angus is a robot. But don't hold that against him, even if he looks more like a large tanning bed than C-3PO.

Brandon Alexander would like to introduce you to Angus, the farmer of the future. He's heavyset, weighing in at nearly 1,000 pounds, not to mention a bit slow. But he's strong enough to hoist 800-pound pallets of maturing vegetables and can move them from place to place on his own. Sure, Angus is a robot, but don't hold that against him, even if he looks more like a large tanning bed than C-3PO. Arobotic arm lifts plants being grown at Iron Ox, a robotic indoor farm, in San Carlos, Calif.

Back in the good old days, farming was easy. Throw some seeds in the ground, keep it watered, pray to your preferred deity to spare your crops from pestilence and wait for harvest season. But with the global population closing in on 7 billion mouths to feed, humanity is going to have to figure out how to grow more food using less land and fewer resources, and soon. So while some researchers and equipment manufacturers are devising intelligent agricultural implements that will toil in tomorrow's fields on our behalf, others are aiming to bring futuristic farms to urban city centers. "Over three billion dollars were lost in California alone [in 2017], because there's not enough people to actually do the operations in seeding or harvesting," Brandon Alexander, co-founder of Iron Ox Robotic Farms, told Engadget.