A mysterious dystopian feeling. Thousands of box-shaped bots carrying groceries in Ocado's warehouse

It's time for an adult factory tour.

"The Hive" is a distribution warehouse owned by Ocado, an online supermarket that handles groceries in London. The metal "3D grid" here is filled with groceries in each square, and an AI control system called "air traffic" communicates with the bots 10 times a second to put in and take out products. increase.

The maximum speed of the bot is 14km / h, and the gap between parallel running and passing bots is only 5mm. These can read the grid with the laser on the bottom and pick up 50 items in 5 minutes.

YouTuber covering "The Hive"

There, YouTuber Tom Scott infiltrated "The Hive" and interviewed thousands of box-shaped bots working in the warehouse.

At the time of this interview, about 2,300 bots were selecting 58,000 kinds of products. The robot picks up all the products in the shortest distance and packs them in a bag. And it is possible to load it on the delivery truck in 5 hours after ordering.

This grid, which extends beyond the horizon, can be expanded as much as you like, and the robot will not fail. Fresh food is transported from here to delivery trucks at high speed, so it reaches customers fresh.

AI is also active in ordering apps

Ocado was born in 2000, and the company name was derived from "Avocado" from various candidates. AI is also playing an active role in the app on the ordering side, and attempts are being made to propose items that users frequently order and items that are in stock and have similar tastes.

Also, in the industry, food waste is usually 2-3%, but in Ocado it is suppressed to 0.4%. In addition, AI will calculate how to pack the minimum number of plastic bags to be efficient, and the delivery route will also take into account construction work and traffic jams to create an efficient path.

Ocado has made shopping extremely efficient thanks to AI. It may not be long before AI and robots manage and even deliver humans.

Source: YouTube (1, 2, 3), ocado TECHNOLOGY via The Awesomer