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Online shopping is easy – but getting those groceries from a warehouse to your front door is a logistical challenge of epic proportions.
At Ocado's warehouse in Dordon, north-east of Birmingham, the complex undertaking is being solved with a combination of AI and automation. "We have to keep track of 8,000 crates flying around at any one time," says Paul Clarke, the company's chief technology officer. "It's the most automated warehouse of its kind."
The 90,000-square-metre warehouse, which opened in February 2013, is the starting point for 190,000 customer deliveries every week. Inside, more than 35 kilometres of conveyor belts shuttle plastic crates between storage shelves and picking areas.
Employees then transfer any of the warehouse's 50,000 items into crates bound for delivery. From the moment an item arrives in the warehouse, Clarke says, a human never touches it until it's placed into a shopping bag just minutes before it goes out for delivery.
In the control room, banks of screens display the location of crates as they move about the warehouse while being tracked by thousands of sensors. "We know where every item is at any moment," Clarke explains. Read more: There's something creepy about this 'soft' robot hand that picks fruit without bruising it
An algorithm calibrates every stage of a crate's journey, right down to the order in which the items enter the bag. If a punnet of strawberries goes into a bag first, a packing algorithm makes sure that a heavy bottle isn't put in afterwards. "Otherwise you'll end up with a smoothie."
Fragile produce presents a huge technical challenge for Ocado. The company's lab is testing robotic arms that are sensitive enough to handle tricky-to-grasp objects, from wine bottles to satsumas. Once the robots have mastered the art of gripping, the firm will use the arms to transfer items from shelves to crates at its warehouse in Andover, Hampshire.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
