Thousands of robots… British grocery store from the future

Tom Scott, a popular YouTuber with more than 3.97 million subscribers, is making headlines by posting a video introducing the numerous robots running inside the British online supermarket company Ocado’s grocery store.

He went to the Ocado Warehouse in southeast London. Products purchased by users at Okado, an internet supermarket, are packed here, but it is a rectangular-shaped robot that collects and packs the goods, not human workers.

The warehouse is the size of seven soccer stadiums. The robot drives through warehouses, picks up goods, and carries more than 1 million goods every day. The warehouse is characterized by a grid-shaped passageway through which robots run. The explanation that the warehouse the robot moves around is so huge that it doesn’t fit the camera. The maximum speed of the robot running around this vast warehouse is 14 km/h. At the bottom of the robot, there are two driving tires on each side, so it can move forward, backward, left, and right in four directions.

Metal rails are laid out in a grid pattern, and products are stored in holes. Various products are stored in each hole. A total of 58,000 kinds of products are stored in the hole. Since different products are stored, the robot picks up everything ordered from the hole as needed.

The number of robots operating at this plant is about 2,300. The bottom of the robot is equipped with a sensor, which identifies the product stored inside the hole and selects the necessary one. In addition, since a laser is installed in the hole, the system that manages the robot can always recognize which hole the robot passed through at any time.

Even when the robots are charging each other, they stop just before they collide. The distance between the robot and the robot is said to be at least 5mm. The robot shifts sideways as it is, evading and maneuvering the stationary robot.

Product robots with a high frequency of ordering in the grocery store are stored in a location that is easy to pick up, and when an order comes in online, it takes about 5 hours to pick up the goods from the warehouse and push them into the delivery truck. Some of the packaging processing is done by human hands, but some work is also done using robotic arms.

There is an elevator-type facility in the space under the lattice rails, which carries baskets with items ordered by customers. Two 3D cameras are installed in the space where goods enter and exit the basket, and the goods in and out of the basket are recorded.

The robot arm puts the product in the shopping cart, but here, be careful not to overlap heavy products and textile products. In addition, large, heavy, and fragile products cannot be accessed by the robot arm and must go through human hands.

The robot running in the warehouse is controlled by an AI system called Hive Mind. Hivemind tells you exactly where the robot should stop, etc. If a running robot lights an orange lamp, there is a possibility that something is wrong. A stopped robot monitors robot behavior in a separate room, and the operator can see what happened and troubleshoot it remotely before returning it to work.

This automation system is OSP (Ocado Smart Platform) developed by Ocado Technology, a technology development division of the Ocado Group that operates Ocado. Ocado describes OSP as a platform for its unique end-to-end e-commerce fulfillment logistics, optimizing the online grocery delivery process from order to delivery. It is said that it is a platform for providing food not only for Ocado, but also around the world. More information about Ocado can be found here.