PIONEERING ROBOT WAREHOUSE

OCADO’S warehouse in Andover spans 240,000 sq ft – around the size of three football pitches.

Hundreds of battery-operated robots swarm the factory, moving at four metres per second as they work together to round up orders.

It takes just five minutes to pick 50 items for an order, compared to two hours for a human.

The stock is stored randomly throughout the warehouse in crates, which are stacked up to 17 boxes high in a grid system. Keeping the items at random was found to save time, although frequently purchased items are near the top of the stacks, and less popular ones near the bottom. The robot pickers know exactly what items are in each crate at any given time and will grab the nearest one so each shopping list can be completed as quickly as possible.

When an order comes in, a robot – which looks like a box on wheels – is sent to collect the crate. It uses a claw to pick up the crate and drops it into a chute.

The crate travels down to a human who is told by a screen which item to take. They pack this in a bag into a second crate. The first crate is sent back to the grid and, once the order is complete, the second is sent to a waiting truck.