{"id":7328,"date":"2019-02-09T14:27:05","date_gmt":"2019-02-09T14:27:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/inside-ocados-burning-robotic-warehouse\/"},"modified":"2019-02-09T14:27:05","modified_gmt":"2019-02-09T14:27:05","slug":"inside-ocados-burning-robotic-warehouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/inside-ocados-burning-robotic-warehouse\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Ocado’s burning robotic warehouse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
<\/p>\n

\"Ocado's<\/span>

Image caption<\/span>
\n
\n Ocado’s robots have been destroyed by a fire
\n <\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Walking into the first chamber of Ocado’s robot warehouse system in May, I was immediately struck by three things: how cold it was, how enormous it was, and how quiet. <\/p>\n

No shouts from warehouse staff, or tinny radios playing pop hits. No beeps from reversing forklift trucks. <\/p>\n

Just the swoosh of wheels from 1,100 waist-high cuboid swarm robots,<\/a> zipping along a grid system the size of several football pitches.<\/p>\n

The entire site spans 18 acres (784,080 sq ft). The robots collect groceries from crates beneath them, and drop them off at a packing station.<\/p>\n

Occasionally they would all simultaneously come to a halt, green lights blinking, awaiting their next command, received via an unofficial 4G network custom-built by Ocado.<\/p>\n

Underneath them, side-by-side with humans, another robot consisting of only one arm was being trained to pack the goods gathered by the swarm to fulfil individual orders.<\/p>\n

It felt futuristic, and a little spine-tingling. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/span>

Image caption<\/span>
\n
\n Zoe visited the warehouse in May
\n <\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I could feel the chill despite my thick scarf and the heavily padded high-vis jacket I was given to wear. The temperature was to protect the cold food, I was told.<\/p>\n

But let’s not forget there’s a good reason why data centres full of computer servers are often built inside icy mountains or under oceans. Electronics get hot. <\/p>\n

I had been hassling the grocery retailer Ocado for months for a tour of its Andover warehouse in the south of the UK. No visits were planned, the press officer kept telling me.<\/p>\n

I was frustrated because Ocado is a significant tech firm in its own right. It has invested millions in developing robotics with the ambition of becoming a people-free platform.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/span>

Image caption<\/span>
\n
\n This packing robot was being trained to handle groceries
\n <\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That means that from the moment you place your online order to the moment it arrives at your door (via a driverless van of course), there will be no human intervention. And this vision was starting to play out in the firm’s Andover warehouse.<\/p>\n

Whatever your thoughts about the impact on human jobs, the robots were certainly busy. The plant was processing 65,000 orders per week.<\/p>\n

Finally, I got my invitation. Thanks to train problems I almost didn’t make it. I missed the “official” tour, although this meant I got my own private guide.<\/p>\n

Ocado’s chief technology officer Paul Clarke was proud of the swarm robots. He explained they were actually all part of the same machine. <\/p>\n

My guide (who was not Mr Clarke) described them as part-robot, part-phone, because of their 4G communications.<\/p>\n

Mr Clarke told me that he thought customers would be “surprised” by the level of automation behind their grocery shopping.<\/p>\n

Other supermarkets were extremely interested in the Ocado blueprint. By the time I saw it in action, it had already been licensed to Morrisons supermarket in the UK, Groupe Casino in France and the Sobeys chain in Canada.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Image copyright<\/span>
\n PA<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>

Image caption<\/span>
\n
\n The warehouse has been badly damaged by fire
\n <\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But on Tuesday 5 February, the warehouse caught fire. Within hours it was declared a “major incident” with 200 firefighters tackling the blaze.<\/p>\n

By Wednesday night, local homes were being evacuated. On Thursday morning, locals say an acrid smell lingers over the area. The fire is only now being dampened down, helped by a rain shower. <\/p>\n

I spoke to a contact at Ocado who expressed shock at how the fire had spread so fast. <\/p>\n

The sprinkler system had won a global award<\/a>. It was recognised as being one of the best in the world, and it appears to have activated correctly, I heard.<\/p>\n

Fortunately nobody was hurt. <\/p>\n

The firm has not yet commented on the probable cause of the blaze and the investigation could go on for quite some time. <\/p>\n

I posted a picture on Instagram that I took on the day of my visit.<\/p>\n

“One of the pitfalls of a robot-only workplace: they can’t smell the smoke when said workplace is on fire,” wrote one commenter.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Source<\/a> by [author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image caption Ocado’s robots have been destroyed by a fire Walking into the first chamber of Ocado’s robot warehouse system in May, I was immediately struck by three things: how cold it was, how enormous it was, and how quiet. No shouts from warehouse staff, or tinny radios playing pop hits. No beeps from reversing … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}