[HN Gopher] How many robots does it take to run a grocery store?... ___________________________________________________________________ How many robots does it take to run a grocery store? [video] Author : helsinkiandrew Score : 162 points Date : 2021-07-06 09:49 UTC (13 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com) | somethoughts wrote: | Its interesting that on the outside of the building there are | still quite a few cars in the parking lot. | cptskippy wrote: | They didn't show you how trucks were unloaded into those bins. | It's not using robots. | imglorp wrote: | That seems like stocking bins is a solvable automation | problem too. Trucks can be unloaded by vaguely smart forklift | bots. Box moving bots are a thing already. Box cutting bot? | They showed an item picking bot in the video: look at the | barcode, maybe do a little tetris and fill a bin with them. | Empty box crushing bot? Repeat. | PeterisP wrote: | Ha - the production setup includes Xbox Kinect components - right | when the employee says "3d cameras" at 2:26 | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE&t=147s | monkeydust wrote: | Yea that did make me smile also, glad some use still being | extracted from the Kinect, it was (and still is) an amazing bit | of kit. I suspect they have support from MS for their use case | rather thank just hacking it. | enominezerum wrote: | I remember this one setup in an aquarium where you could move | sand around and the Kinect would read how you have the sand | formed and apply geological effects to it. | | Pile it high, mountain, carve it out, water and eventually | sea. It was pretty amazing as it was all projected into the | sand in real time and looked just amazing. | | Think it was running on some 1080 or 1080-Ti when that was | king of graphics cards. | bingidingi wrote: | That's an augmented reality sandbox! You can make one | yourself: https://arsandbox.ucdavis.edu/ | glasss wrote: | FIRST Robotics had a brief stint encouraging teams to use the | Kinects for something on the robot, or just test them out and | see what you come up with. | | I remember reading through the documentation and case studies | and realizing just how advanced the tech was / is. | typon wrote: | GPUs formed the backbone of machine learning. Gamers moving | society forward :) | mdip wrote: | This isn't an area that I study, directly, but I've had some | experience with other robotic automation systems on a | small/medium scale. | | Maybe this is common and my experience is at issue, but I found | the grid design with the "workers" on top to be really | interesting. | | My most direct experience was with a tape robot. This wasn't a | run-of-the-mill backup library for a small DC, but a huge room on | half of a floor of the datacenter that had a 6 axis[0] "bigger | than an average adult man" one-arm robot that is usually seen in | an automotive factory. It moved on a track the length of the | room, grabbed tapes from a library and inserted it into drives; | all of which were attached to a mainframe. | | This was done with so few sensors, that the tape robot couldn't | tell if it successfully grabbed a tape or missed it; indication | of failure wasn't realized until the drive reported no tape | present when the operation completed. | | When it missed, the tape often ended up in the track where it | was, sometimes, destroyed or could cause other forms of major | malfunction. | | Dealing with products of varying sizes, sensors to detect the | successful retrieval of a product seem like they'd be necessary | no matter how things are setup, but by designing it with the | robots on top, a failed grab, at worst, results in the product | remaining somewhere near where it is, or in the wrong bin -- but | not stuck in the way of the track. | | Coupled with sensors to detect "when the product was 'lost'" or | where the product was failed to be retrieved from, the system | could attempt to "retry the operation", avoiding operational | shut-down/having to rely on the skill of operational staff to | identify a failure condition early enough to prevent problems.[1] | | [0] I think, not positive | | [1] There's a study out there regarding factory automation that | appeared shortly after Elon Musk gave up on "fully automated | production" that talks about how bad people are at responding to | "rare conditions" in an automated factory, resulting in costs | that often outweigh the benefits of removing people from the | process -- this sort of design appears to try to address some of | the major things. | mdip wrote: | Worth mentioning: I never worked with the mainframe in my | previous job but was located in the datacenter. Most of my | knowledge came from asking why the suite had 20 or so "big red | stop buttons". | | Apparently someone was hospitalized shortly after it was | installed. And like all things, it was replaced a year later by | a much more compact device that stored somewhere on the order | of 100 times the data about a year after I started. | matsemann wrote: | Worth noting: Ocado is fighting a legal battle against AutoStore | over this technology: | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-17/ocado-los... | | The warehouse system in the video is basically a copy of | AutoStore. | zinekeller wrote: | > AutoStore says its first supplied technology to Ocado as | early as 2012 and this is the foundation on which the Ocado | Smart Platform was built. The company has claimed several | patent infringements relating to the design and lifting | mechanism of Ocado's robots. | | If true, yikes, but at the same time I have doubts if some | aspects of the technology are even patentable (or at least make | the claims too narrow to the point that patent-free variations | allow workarounds and make the patents useless). | michaelt wrote: | Given that Autostore's patent on the idea is from 1997 [1] | and has expired, it's difficult to see how they could have | another, non-expired patent on the same thing. | | [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/DE69818303T2/en | JoeAltmaier wrote: | Unless its a copy of the technology, is it protected ip? Its an | idea (use tracked robots on top of product bins) and there's | some issue about patenting ideas vs technology. | rvense wrote: | I do wonder what the environmental impact of doing it like this | is. The embodied energy and materials used for all these | structures and robots, as well as the energy to keep them | running. | | My immediate guess is that it adds a significant overhead to the | products, but I really don't know. | tobyhinloopen wrote: | If you think robots consume much energy and are bad for the | environment, try switching them out for humans and see how much | energy you need to keep them running. | dsign wrote: | It's probably non-trivial, but human time also has a high | environmental impact, because we eat and use stuff (think about | a parking lot full of shoppers or employee cars). If we are | going to pay our environmental human cost anyway, better if our | time is not spent doing boring things that we do just because | of the money. | Cthulhu_ wrote: | If there's some overhead but in return they can work 24/7 | without breaks then it's cheaper. Constant output is really | valuable. | rvense wrote: | Oh, I'm sure it's cheaper to operate, otherwise they wouldn't | do it. But I am of the opinion that energy and many natural | resources are extremely underpriced when one factors in | climate change and other externalities like the impact of | exported e-waste. | yissp wrote: | Would you need to compare it to the environmental impact of | the lifestyles of the dozens / hundreds of human workers | who would be staffing a traditional warehouse? | rvense wrote: | Do the humans only exist to staff the warehouse? | dkjaudyeqooe wrote: | No, but they have to drive or otherwise travel to the | warehouse to work, provisions have to be made for them, | such as air conditioning, and so on. | | A human at work is hardly environmentally neutral. | randyrand wrote: | humans require ~60-100 watts, 24/7. | | A human only works about 8hrs a day. Also our food is much less | efficient to produce than electricity. | | So if this robot is less than ~600 watts average, and as | productive as a human, it's a win. | | Id imagine it's well under 600. | dageshi wrote: | Probably less environmentally damaging than an equivalent human | work force to do the same job I'm guessing. | mongol wrote: | I don't know either, but I expect the opposite. It seems | incredibly efficient for what it does. I don't know how you | could do the same thing with less energy? Obviously, it is | possibe to optimize something here and there, but if we compare | with humans doing the same job, and the energy they would need, | this must surely be less...? | rvense wrote: | I don't actually know! But there are a lot of factors. One is | the movement of the robots, another is their construction and | the supporting structure, as well as all the electronics | involved. Making electronics is very resource-intensive. | | I often wonder about how to make these kinds of comparisons, | but it always involves so many guesstimates that it quickly | falls apart. | matsemann wrote: | I think you should compare it to what's normally being done | for groceries. You would get a trailer of a good. Then in | your warehouse split that into smaller pallets, going with | other goods on a new trailer to a store. There, a worker | would have to put the goods on the shelves, and a customer | later pick it into their cart. The store also uses lots of | resources. Same with every shopper in a neighborhood | driving their own car to the store, vs a van delivering to | multiple homes. | | So I think it's better. | rvense wrote: | Oh, I understand that. It's still a lot of robots, but | maybe it means less lorries and, ultimately, a whole | layer of small shops and maybe secondary warehouses that | aren't needed. Maybe it does add up to less fuel and less | steel. | | It also leads to a lot more centralization, but that's a | different discussion, of course. | snarf21 wrote: | I don't have a source handy but I remember reading something a | while ago that said the carbon footprint for someone to drive | to the grocery store and back is larger that the carbon | footprint of all the other transportation involved in that | product. | Shmebulock wrote: | Would be interesting to compare this to the environmental | impact of having human workers | lucb1e wrote: | From a simple mass ratio perspective, these robots and a human | probably carry about the same amount of stuff. Moving a few kg | of robot units versus 80 kg of standard white male units, I can | see the efficiency gain there. That is of course just one | aspect, but I think you're being a bit quick to jump to | guessing about conclusions of it being 'significantly' worse. | maqnius wrote: | Technically interesting, but I hope it never replaces my local | grocery store. It gives me kind of a dystopian feeling of a world | where people are living a completely separated life, only | interacting with machines. That will not lead to happier people, | nor to more fulfilling jobs. | JoeAltmaier wrote: | Yes I prefer some underpaid human to wait on me too. But I see | the world going in the automation direction at breakneck speed. | If we can figure out where people fit in this brave new world | (i.e. UBI) then its a utopian future, not a dystopian one. | TheFreim wrote: | Are supermarket workers under payed? | JoeAltmaier wrote: | Yes | TheFreim wrote: | How so? | JoeAltmaier wrote: | Poverty wage. | Razengan wrote: | Most people working at such mundane repetitive jobs already | behave and feel like machines anyway. Do you really think they | feel happy and fulfilled, or even see a way out? | maqnius wrote: | You are right about the majority of those jobs, I guess. I | maybe shouldn't have brought in the quality of the job here. | | I actually wanted to make a point against reducing social | interactions in everyday life, especially with people outside | of our bubble. | | But well, I don't really see a way out, that wouldn't be | completely illusive at this point, like, valuing well being | of humans and nature over productivity gains and because-we- | can in technology. That doesn't justify worsen the situation | though. | | As for me, I try to go only shopping in independent and | ecological grocery shops, because of the products and because | of the more welcoming atmosphere. Working there is not so | bad, it's actually quite nice mostly (I can tell from | experience). | [deleted] | KingMachiavelli wrote: | Reminds me of the Sibyl System in Psycho Pass. | | https://youtu.be/LyQpY6UWs2E | http://cdn26.us1.fansshare.com/photo/psychopass/sybil-system... | Dracophoenix wrote: | I see you're a man of culture. In all seriousness, brains | aside, the resemblance is striking. | asteroidbelt wrote: | They must have fired a thousand people when built that. | | That happens when your min wages are high. | | Also, UBI seems to be inevitable. | helsinkiandrew wrote: | Interesting to compare "build an environment and process so we | can use simple robots in it" to the Boston Dynamics - "build | robots that can work in complex environments". | | Also interesting to see the robot arm being used to move the | products that currently come in boxes (suitable for humans to | unpack) if robots become the norm will we see them being | distributed like electronic components on reels/tape that are | easier to unpack mechanically | | https://www.google.com/search?q=reels+of+electronic+componen... | imtringued wrote: | Are there examples of whole PCBs being distributed on reels or | tape? Because those are much flatter than a robot arm. | | Individual components != assembled product | janekm wrote: | Yes, modules are typically available either on tape&reel or | on trays (also easy to pick). Also the Raspberry Pi pico is | an example of a PCB that can be either a final dev board or a | module and comes on a Reel: | https://makerbright.com/raspberry-pi-pico-reel-bulk.html | michaelt wrote: | Technically, self-adhesive LED strips are PCBs distributed on | reels of tape. | the-dude wrote: | Whole PCBs are mostly distributed in trays, from which they | are picked and placed. | glasss wrote: | In one of Asimov's books, The Caves of Steel, he talked about | how Androids run all of the farming equipment on Earth to feed | everyone. I don't remember the exact line, but the reasoning | for Androids running regular farm equipment was that, in his | universe, it was just way easier and cheaper to build Androids | that can use all the same tools humans can, instead of building | automated versions of all the tools. | | The other interesting tidbit was that the vast majority of the | world was farm land. Humans lived in huge cities with tons of | verticality. This was because there were too many humans on | Earth - a whopping 9 Billion. | Cthulhu_ wrote: | It's only a matter of time before the products are packaged to | accommodate automatic systems picking orders; at the moment (as | the video shows) the robot has to be adjusted specifically for | the wide variety of packages. | | Anyway I was thinking, why not just have a long row (can go | vertical as well) of product dispensers where all orders just go | under? I mean they'd pass thousands of dispensing stations, but | the output would be really consistent. And there'd be shortcuts | here and there. I probably have baggage handling in mind. | Animats wrote: | That's been done for products that are reasonably uniform. | Digi-Key uses it for some parts. Fulfillment centers for | drugstores use it. | | You still have to load the dispensers. | deepserket wrote: | The problem that comes into my mind is that dispensers are | tech, while bins are literally a bunch of | plastic/cardboard/metal. But on the pros, your system is a FIFO | queue, while the system in the video is LIFO, the latter is not | good for goods with an expiry date. | | I am currently working in a warehouse with 80k unique items, i | am planning to automate the system (because currently it's | using little to none automation, mainly because there is a | conflict of interest) and a system of bins with the | pickers/refilles zooming on the top is the best solution I've | found so far. | | I think that i will make the project open hardware/software. | corentin88 wrote: | For those wondering, the footage took place at Ocado's grocery | warehouse, in the south-east of London. | | I'd be curious to see something similar in Amazon's warehouse. | krisoft wrote: | > I'd be curious to see something similar in Amazon's | warehouse. | | Here you are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nKPC-WmLjU | tzs wrote: | That big area where it is just stacks of bins and the robots | that move them around would be a great place to set a | chase/fight scene in an action movie. | GrumpyNl wrote: | Is AI really needed for this? | jonplackett wrote: | would think it's for optimising the paths of the robots on the | grid. | lucb1e wrote: | but A* is not AI. Routing is like the easiest part and we | figured that out for games and other applications decades | ago. Use a 3d data structure where the third dimension is | time, not exploring branches that cross a cell during a time | where it is already marked as occupied. At least that's what | I did for automating the air traffic control game from the | bsdgames package on debian (/usr/games/atc). | | Either way, GrumpyNl asks a fair question. Some parts, sure: | machine learning aka "AI" for working with this vision system | is probably a lot quicker than manually figuring out rules | for recognizing items. But the amount of emphasis they place | on it, that this is all run by one big AI? It sounds to me | more like they mean "AI" in the same way that 90s games said | "CPU" or "AI" or "Computer" player, when it had nothing to do | with machine learning. | PeterisP wrote: | Things like controlling the robot arm that takes individual | items from the boxes require state of art computer vision/AI | techniques and can't really be done with classical approaches. | | Optimization of the robot movement across the grid might be | done in various ways with different tradeoffs, but in general | the study of algorithms for multi-stage planning is also a | subfield of AI. | GrumpyNl wrote: | Why the downvote, i would really like to know and how it would | be applied. | ksec wrote: | https://www.ocadogroup.com/technology/technology-pioneers | | Although 5 hours is quite a bit longer than what I expected. | Although for next day delivery it shouldn't be much of a problem. | | AFAIK Amazon warehouse are still hand picked by human with item | moving assisted by underlying Robert? | | This is a fascinating field I am wondering if there are any | similar technology for heavy, frozen products. For US that will | be something like Sysco? | michaelt wrote: | _> Although 5 hours is quite a bit longer than what I | expected._ | | I thought the opposite - even in a warehouse that huge, there | are items where they only keep five hours worth of stock? To me | that seems incredibly lean. | | Of course, that probably only applies to really short life | products, like packaged sushi. | jon-wood wrote: | I think the point wasn't that there are some products being | restocked every five hours, and instead that the turnaround | time from a truck turning up from a supplier to the products | on that truck being available for delivery is five hours. | michaelt wrote: | Surely newly arrived stock would go on the tail of a FIFO | queue, while stock being sold would be drawn from the head? | | So the minimum time from arrival to dispatch couldn't be | less than the length of the queue? | wokinoozle wrote: | Speaking as an underlying Robert, I have to agree. It's always | better to have one of us around. | Razengan wrote: | Starting a new account on HN for a joke eh, I wish you the | best. | jonplackett wrote: | Robots are over-rated. | | Always good to have an underlying Robert instead. | jameshart wrote: | See this response to Fiat's 'Hand built by robots' slogan of | the early eighties: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU- | tuY0Z7nQ | Razengan wrote: | I always thought that most shops could/should have been replaced | by giant vending machines long ago. Just be sealed-off warehouses | with multiple dispensing units on the public-facing side. | | Maybe someone like Amazon will try something like that. | prawn wrote: | I was thinking the other day, if stores are shutting down in San | Francisco to avoid shoplifters, will they switch to purely online | ordering, or like some existing stores where you order from a | front desk and the picking/packing is done by warehouse staff. I | remember using a department store about 8 years ago in Edinburgh | that operated like that. | | And if humans aren't walking the aisles, will we see a change in | product packaging to focus on shipping and picking/packing | efficiencies rather than shelf appeal? | helsinkiandrew wrote: | Store was probably Argos? | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argos_(retailer) | | Still going - but an increasing % of their sales are online. | prawn wrote: | I think it probably was - rings a bell. We were buying a | child's care seat. I remember going there, flicking through a | catalogue in a waiting room, placing an order and paying at | the counter, and then waiting until it was brought to us. | Seemed novel at the time, to us Australians. | | Major retailers here have click-and-collect but I don't think | it was common 8 years ago. A big hardware store like Bunnings | only started selling online in 2018, I think. | helsinkiandrew wrote: | Remarkably Argos has been going with the same catalogue | model for 50 years. | shireboy wrote: | ...and then an industry of hacking warehouses and delivery | drones for fun and profit crops up. | dharmab wrote: | The "employee picks products for you" system is how most stores | worked before the modern supermarket was invented. | Dracophoenix wrote: | Looks like we're reinventing ourselves, just like with | timesharing/the cloud. | reggieband wrote: | It's also how every supermarket in the neighbourhood in | Barcelona I lived in worked. You could either buy pre- | packaged produce (like two apples in a styrofoam based | covered in plastic) or go to the produce section and point at | what you wanted and an attendant would place it in a bag, | weigh it and put a sticker on it which would scan at the | register. | | Another thing I hated about many European supermarkets were | the one-way gates at the entrance (like subway turnstiles) | and the only exists through the registers. Walmart started | doing similar during Covid but at least you could exit | through self-checkout. | dvh wrote: | There's no way this is profitable. Local supermarket is similarly | sized and there are maybe 30-50 employees visible in store, each | payed $3/hour. This has hundreds or maybe thousands of robots, | even if only 10 robots broke down every day it would be more | expensive than paying people. Even if I completely ignore initial | purchase costs, I just don't see a way that after 1-2 years this | isn't massive money drain. | JoeAltmaier wrote: | A million items a day? It all depends on margins and overhead | etc, which we would have trouble estimating here. And even if | its not "bricks-and-mortar profitable" it may be "wall-street | profitable" | swiley wrote: | `(50 _3_ 8)/10=120.` What robot component do you think costs | more than that? | turnerc wrote: | Their H12021 results suggest otherwise | https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/OCDO/half-y... | maltalex wrote: | > There's no way this is profitable | | No way? That's an overstatement. What if the real estate is a | lot cheaper because it's well outside the city in an industrial | zone? | | And what if this operation is large and efficient enough to | service a population x10 the size of a _similarly sized | supermarket_ with just a handful of technicians (and an army of | delivery people...). | helsinkiandrew wrote: | You are almost certainly wrong. Ocado are profitable and are | partnering with other retailers globally to use the technology. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocado_Group#History | | Where do store employees get paid $3/hour? Minimum wage in UK | (where that warehouse is) is $9-12/hour depending on age. | brutus1213 wrote: | Ocado also bought kindred last year. I was looking at cutting | edge robotics companies that might have rocket ship growth, and | kindred was on my radar. The sum for the acquisition seemed on | the low side. Robotics is generally hard at the moment, not sure | who will be the Google-equivalent. | Animats wrote: | They have automatic bin picking! Amazon hasn't been able to get | that to work in production. Amazon's system has Kiva robots | moving bins around, but humans pick from the bins. | | Expect a big drop in fulfillment center workers when Amazon gets | bin picking that works. | contingencies wrote: | These grid-based systems are now standard and have been widely | deployed. I am not sure but I believe the original is | https://www.dematic.com/en-us/products/products-overview/sto... | Animats wrote: | There are lots of systems for moving totes around. Those have | existed for at least 40 years. It's robots getting items out | of the totes that's new. | contingencies wrote: | Having designed one I can tell you it's not that hard. | | Thinking from first principles helps. First, simplify the | problem domain. The challenges are generally oddball shapes | (think: heavy golf club), heavy items, speed, spatial | efficiency, specialist handling requirements, environment, | reliability, mobility and cost. If you have unlimited | patience (retries allowed, no hard speed requirement) and | less limited space (more power, better viewing angles, | opportunity for stereoscopic vision), roughly similar form | factor SKUs (=CPG), a purpose-built environment and no | special handling requirements (nuclear waste/fresh | food/fast-melting ice cream), no mobility requirement or | cost sensitivity, then it's much easier. | | Second, simplify handling by batching items in standard | containers. What these system vendors never show you is how | much they overcharge you for plastic boxes and how much | energy is wasted loading, unloading and cleaning them. | | Third, a grid-based system is clearly the most spatially | efficient, so design around that. | | In these systems the true spatial efficiency for most items | is probably poor as _Dematic Autostore_ for instance only | offer 3 bin sizes. The true spatio-temporal efficiency is | probably middling except when considered in parallel for | huge order throughput requirements and a large number of | SKUs because an untrained primate can pick faster than a | bot for arbitrary items in most cases. Capex is very high, | so these systems only make sense if you have a guaranteed | large-SKU picking problem that won 't go away, and you | don't care about owning the knowledge to implement it cost- | efficiently (eg. you are a manager looking out for #1 | instead of the company's long term bottom line). | | These things are terrible for the world, however, as they | basically enable the accelerated consumption of single use | plastics which is the CPG industry as a whole. I predict | that in progressive countries such systems will be taxed or | outlawed within our lifetimes, probably first in Europe, | probably first in Holland as they are so good with | agriculture and logistics. | cptskippy wrote: | Walmart compelled vendors to put barcodes on product in the | late 70s early 80s. I'm surprised Amazon hasn't encouraged | vendors to supply "robot friendly" or "frustration free" | packaging. | the42thdoctor wrote: | What types of algorithms are used in this type of problems ? | CodeGlitch wrote: | I would put money of them using OpenCV and the assorted algos | in that library for their vision work. | dkjaudyeqooe wrote: | Probably various optimization algorithms. You'd want to have | your robots move the least distance for the work required since | that minimises energy use and wear and tear. Some form of | knapsack problem would needed to be solved for packaging the | goods for delivery optimally. Then there would be scheduling | needed to handle incoming jobs effectively. | amelius wrote: | It's not a difficult problem space. You can use quite simple | algorithms for planning the movements of these robots. And you | can improve them later without them affecting the rest of the | system, which makes this easier than most IT systems which have | all kinds of hairy dependencies. | | If two grocery carts crash into each other it's not the end of | the world. In contrast, if you're writing a distributed | database system and you corrupt data then that can be very | serious. | accurrent wrote: | Uhh.... Hairy dependencies are very much a problem in this | space just like any other type of IT system (in fact worse | cause the code is usually written in C++ - so no package | manager). Plus the tooling is non-existant... You will still | need some type of client server architecture/failover | redundancy. You also don't have very many options when it | comes to testing. Writing simulations for this and running | tests is very non-trivial. The algorithms themselves will | need to take into account failures. What happens when one of | the robots fails/wears out? (and this WILL happen) | Deconflicting the robots is certainly nontrivial. For | efficient solutions in this field theres a whole bunch of | fairly non-trivial algorithms in Operations Research and | planning that exist. | imtringued wrote: | The environment is also hostile to humans so they will need | to build a dedicated tow robot that gets stuck robots out | of the system. | amelius wrote: | You just build a platform which can move over the xy | grid, and which allows humans to sit on top. | | It's quite simple to make sure (using e.g. bumpers) that | if a robot crashes into the platform then nobody gets | hurt. | | Of course a towrobot would be better, but it's not really | necessary and it also might get stuck. | DaiPlusPlus wrote: | I'm sure QuickSort is being used somewhere in there... | | ...though I assume you're asking specifically about the quasi- | autonomous movement of the tote-bots? There is no one single | "algorithm" to represent or model their movement, it's a | complex control system. | djhworld wrote: | I wish this video was longer and went into more detail, although | I guess Ocado like to keep things light as they make money on | selling this tech to other supermarket chains. | | I used to be an Ocado customer for about 9 years or so and they | were very, very reliable in terms of deliveries and order | fulfillment (I rarely ever got substitutes) - I'm wondering if | this tech and other things in the warehouse played a huge role in | making sure inventory/supply always met demand. | | When doing a similar online shop with ASDA we get | substitutes/missing items/unavailable items every week, and the | vans are always late. | dkjaudyeqooe wrote: | I wonder what happens when a robot gets physically stuck in the | middle of that grid. Do they have a trolley that humans can use | to skate over and dislodge the offending device? | alanbernstein wrote: | Seems like any other bot could push it to the edge. It just | requires a failed robot to default to a neutral gear. | lucb1e wrote: | Or they have a boss-level robot with a bit of rubber on the | wheels and you don't even have to fail in neutral. | | I kind of wish this would turn into a giant robot wars for a | few days of the year, maybe you can buy a ticket to control | one of them for the day, if only it weren't such a waste ^^' | jhgorrell wrote: | In one of the other videos, you can see a 3 by 3 sized platform | with the same wheel setup - it has a platform for 1-2 people | and a crane. | | I imagine they set some sort of exclusion zone around the | broken robot, then drive out in the large platform and pick it | up. | irjustin wrote: | Xbox vision! | hk1337 wrote: | I wonder what the budget comparison is to just hiring people to | do it? | monkeydust wrote: | "We'll use the huge amounts of data that we gather to understand | what customers are most likely to order" | | Were regular Ocado users and its been a life saver during the | pandemic - but - we have noticed that we keep ordering the same | produce each week, the amount of new items is minimal compared to | when we used to go into the store. Yes they suggest things but | the suggestions (for us) have been poor whereas in store we would | tend to try more new things. This may just be us and the algo | works better for others but I think it should there is still much | room for improvement in recommendation algos and there is a | discovery challenge with online vs offline for groceries. | shog_hn wrote: | We also use Ocado, and I have noticed this exact same side | effect. Still a great service overall though. | conductr wrote: | I just expect this would happen and so it's one of my main | reasons to keep shopping in store. We tend to shop instead of | procure off a strict list. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-07-06 23:01 UTC)