An army of 2,000 robots works in this London warehouse

tireless worker

Robots work non-stop for 20 hours a day and each collect up to 2 million food items each turn, more than the capacity of a human worker. Robots can take orders in five minutes, which is about five times faster than trained human workers. Currently, powered by an algorithm, these robots pick up boxes of goods to carry to humans and put them in shopping bags for delivery. But the idea is that the work is practically completely automated.

This is not an android, more like an oven on wheels working on a grid system; the robots, with more than half of their pieces printed in 3D, move over the squares, like pieces on a chessboard. Under the floor, each box hides a stack of up to 21 containers. Containers filled with some of the 50,000 products offered by Ocado, saved according to the algorithm which predicts when they will be needed. When someone orders, the robots rotate on their own and towards the container they need, passing within five millimeters of each other.

Bots are not autonomousInstead, they are governed by systems that work like air traffic control and plan their routes for them.


Most warehouses that work with this technology have not yet reached full capacity, so the new technology means that workers can be moved from one job to another; then a wave of layoffs is not expected (at least temporarily).

Based on okadothe system does not require a specially constructed warehouse, so Ocado technology can be quickly set up for its customers, which include Marks & Spencer in the UK and Kroger in the US.

Reference: OCADO

Roderick Gilbert

"Entrepreneur. Internet fanatic. Certified zombie scholar. Friendly troublemaker. Bacon expert."

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