HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

These days I try to avoid physical shops as much as possible. Here in the UK, we have a "supermarket" called Ocado. If you haven't heard of them, please look them up on Youtube[0]. They don't have any physical shops I know of, but have recently started stocking M&S products. They are known in the UK to usually be more expensive, but good quality. It might be the Whole Foods of the UK.

They run warehouses with a grid of rails and seem to be on a mission to automate as much of the logistics and delivery of products as possible. The website allows me to set up a regular weekly order, I can edit it up until the evening of the day before to add any last minute items. I think I pay £10 a month for unlimited deliveries over £40. Having someone bring a weekly food shop to your door for £2.50 is a great deal.

Not only is this a super easy to get food shopping done each week, I can do it from the comfort of my desk (great for when Retros get a little boring!). It also stops me impulse buying things.

I know I already have a December 23rd order coming full of Christmas food and I get to avoid the packed Christmas food shoppers and the depressing Christmas decorations and music in store (I'm a scrooge).

I don't want a better shopping experience, I want the best food, at the cheapest prices, delivered to me in a reliable way. I don't want to think about buying food any longer than I have to each week.

[0] https://youtu.be/ssZ_8cqfBlE

⬐ Loughla

Do you eat the same meals each week? I prefer shopping in person, because it helps me fill in the days on our bi-weekly meal plan that I just couldn't come up with anything interesting to eat for supper.

⬐ swayvil

You can actually get that food pre-chewed too, for added efficiency. Comes in a big tube like caulk.

⬐ winnit

I thought it came as a dry powder you combine with water and shake?

⬐ gl-prod

Preshaken (not stirred) powder

⬐ Dylan16807

Chewing is an important part of eating.

Being in a grocery store is not an important part of managing or using food supplies.

⬐ gmac

Hint: I recently cancelled the unlimited delivery service, and discovered that most of the delivery slots we use cost £2 or less and they suddenly started offering us lots of money-off vouchers to keep us coming back.

It's a shame they had to switch from Waitrose to M&S food. When they offered Waitrose stuff, it really was the best food and the best logistics combined. But the M&S quality and range are much less solid in our experience.

⬐ francis-io

I did cancel my delivery plan a while back and noticed you had to go via support. No excuse for this in 2022 with such a modern setup. Obviously it was to retain me as a customer.

Or modern warehouse...

Random example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE

I thought this was an interesting insight into what a fully-automated grocery store looks like. And also wild to think about how different things are when you design them for automation from the ground up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE

There's a great example of a facility built from the ground up with a robot-first approach in Ocado, the grocery packing/delivery company, it looks very different to warehouses that have humans in mind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE

It let them do a few novel things I think, most obvious is the dense packing grid, no need for humans to get around the area so they really pack in the functional units. Next is the precision they can pull off without having to worry about wiggle-room or interruptions from people, the robots move very close to eachother which would be a big no-no if you had to worry about people.

>rethinking the whole process instead yields a much bigger boost.

Reminds me of a Tom Scott video where he checks out the Ocado warehouse in the UK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE

It's crazy; they've rethought the entire system to have it navigable by machine.

⬐ noodlesUK

This was an absolutely fantastic video, thanks for sharing that. I’ve ordered from Ocado before, but I never thought that the logistics behind it were so different from just a very large warehouse store…

⬐ NortySpock

Is that the one that caught fire and they didn't want to use water to put it out because it would harm the robots?

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-58190969

Also... As as exercise for the reader, compare the Ocado top-down picker with the Kiva (now Amazon) bottom-up shelf lifter, and then guess which system has a better value-for-money and is faster to deploy.

⬐ gridspy

Looks like they should have invested in alternative non-water fire suppression technology rather than choosing the "no suppression" option.

From Article linked by parent:

> A Hampshire Fire and Rescue Authority report found there was an hour's delay in dialling 999 and staff had turned off the sprinkler system.

⬐ jimnotgym

A friends company implemented Kiva. It still took many years of planning and implementation.

⬐ thamer

No, it's not the same warehouse. The article says "The facility in Andover, Hampshire, burnt down [...]" – which is here: https://goo.gl/maps/sKC2oBkL9JJUawuY8

Whereas Tom Scott was at this location: https://goo.gl/maps/H54SKTkumd4dEyam6 (the same outside view of the location is at 0:03 in the video linked above).

⬐ half-kh-hacker

Fun fact! There was a fire at the Erith site too: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57883332

⬐ Reichhardt

You're still delivering boxes, jars and cans of ingredients to customers, to cook and prepare food at their home.

There's a lot of waste there: it would be more efficient to just feed people from centralized canteens located near living and work spaces. The problem is that you have sales taxes and tips to add to those kind of meals, plus the wastage of inconsistent demand for the restaurant generally and for individual menu items.

⬐ rcxdude

The other big reason for that design is storage density: it trades off fast random access for storage density (since things are all stacked up on top of each other). This makes a lot of sense for last-mile deliveries around densely populated (and thus expensive real-estate) areas. (Though as pointed out, autostore had a very similar concept for a while before).

⬐ gorgoiler

It really is too bad that they lost their Waitrose deal. The machinery is nothing unless you have a product I want to buy.

⬐ NicoJuicy

Ocado was originally an AutoStore client and then copied AutoStore's warehouse automation solution.

Based on the timeline of events, they basically copied AutoStore. I'm actually curious what the next lawsuits will bring, but i don't think it's going to be in favor for Ocado.

There was already a preliminary result and while Ocado says it's a win, i think that's a deceiving statement if you actually care to read it.

https://archive.is/LuiMp

> The Norwegian company claimed in U.S. filings that Ocado infringed four patents for the robotic systems. The judge found that, while Ocado used technology covered by three of the patents, those claims failed to fulfill requirements of clearly describing the invention in a way that others can understand.

We'll see how it goes.

⬐ patentatt

It's a huge win for Ocado. The first line of defense when charged with patent infringement is to invalidate the patents themselves. No patents, no patent infringement. So it doesn't matter if they're doing the same thing if they can get the patents invalidated, which it sounds like is the case here.

⬐ NicoJuicy

It isn't a definite conclusion. It still needs to appear before a full committee.

This temporarily one for an injunction did conclude that Ocado is using 3/4 patents. But the injuction was not granted.

Note: not an expert, but I'll probably ask one in patent law for more information to one to check if I'm correct. Because I have some stocks in AutoStore and that included rudimentary analysis of AutoStore vs. Ocado lawsuits without going deep into the actual patents.

I think your vision makes sense. It might not be optimal currently but as A.I., automation, and other technologies advance (Fusion fingers-crossed) I can see it becoming plausible and even desirable over the "pure-ish" capitalist economy we currently have.

Just to showcase some of the automation prototypes that makes me a hopeful believer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/14/weedkill... https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/PlayStation-s-sec...

3-d printed homes too

⬐ TaylorAlexander

Thank you. I should say that critically, this scheme is not dependent on advancement in technology. It does take advantage of the fact that computers can perform labor for free, but there are examples of the elimination of hunger and equitable distribution of food without using any advanced technology. Specifically the Sikhs in India [1] serve over 1 million free meals a day in facilities all over India, and in Vienna Austria housing is built by the city and distributed equitably [2].

Advanced technology changes what is possible, but we can do this without advanced technology. 3D printed homes for example don’t really solve the problem as framing a home isn’t expensive: it’s the land and finishing the home that cost the most.

[1] https://youtu.be/qdoJroKUwu0

[2] https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_articl...

⬐ BingoAhoy

Point accepted. Yeah technology isn't necessary, but if tech can do the same amount for the same cost removing much of the labor requirement then that's a tremendous win. Additionally the lower the cost the easier it is to append a welfare or socialist cost on the the tax payer's bill. Providing decent food, housing, and some minimal healthcare at 5% of GDP vs 40% of a nations GDP makes a world of difference.

At thresholds of 5% combined with high automation mean such social programs won't be as vehemently contested and their absence might even be viewed as a unnecessary cruelty.

Some mutant hybrid of what the Sihks do in India, and these automations might be interesting:

https://mobile.twitter.com/TechAmazing/status/14397489959166...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byDmDWq7wc8

+ a quick google of food factory gifs/videos

A hybrid mutant that maximizes yield, minimizes cost and labor, if such a permutation is realistic and technology-wise permitting.

Socialism partially generates such an antagonistic response (at least in the USA) because how much of a burden it is on others, Minimize that burden might change the fundamental collective consciousness to how people view what the government should provide.

⬐ TaylorAlexander

Yes!! That is a big motivation. If supporting others is very cheap people are more likely to support it.

And I love that you're on to the food machines. I have obsessed over the idea of automated production based on the Sikh systems. I hope I can build it some day. Or even if I don't, that someone does.

> I don't think Ocado has a dense enough network of local warehouses.

yes, AFAIK, Ocado relies on a few large highly automated warehouses. (1)

The main issue seems to be that the level of automation is so high that a fire is not noticed soon enough. This has happened twice. (2)

1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE

2) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57883332

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-49071456

I've been wrong many times before but still have trouble believing this would be more efficient than just having two separate buildings. Even in places where land is very expensive.

How many dark stores would you have to run in a city like Boston to get the same efficiency you could get from a signle warehouse with a similar system to this?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE

And if you insist on doing that multi-use concept - it still seems like a robot on wheels and with much different than human arms would be more efficient.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE

I feel like a lot of factories are going to go in this direction. Lots of complex automation but ultimately very simple mechanisms with a strong framework to make sure nothing goes wrong.

⬐ pyinstallwoes

What percentage of labor is factories? We're talking about all human physical labor.

⬐ handmodel

Is a cashier/bagger physical labor? Is stocking the shelves of a grocery store? What about a truck driver or unloader?

I would say all these jobs would be automated but 0 of these would be automated by a humanoid. Driver/cashier/baggers will be computers with sensors and unlouder/shelfer will be robots more similar to that vid. Things like construction I think will be assembled ahead of time and brought to side with more automated cranes and sensors.

The number of jobs that seem like "this can be automated but can't be automated by a robot and isn't worth it to build specific robot for but IS expensive enough to use a robot that will always be more expensive than a car" seems small to me.

Tom Scott had a good video a couple of weeks ago about a grocery packing warehouse that has a sophisticated picking network:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE

⬐ arkitaip

That Ocado factory had a fire recently cause by a robot collision, so the quality doesn't seem quite there yet [0]

[0] https://www.euronews.com/next/2021/07/19/ocado-warehouse-fir...

Obligatory Tom Scott video of the robots working in presumably the same warehouse

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE

⬐ Eavolution

Bad timing Tom! (or he's cursed)

⬐ dredmorbius

At least he got the video out before it burned down this time.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-zjJpFYtx9s

⬐ matsemann

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.

⬐ JoeAltmaier

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.

⬐ zinekeller

> 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

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

⬐ yskchu

According to this[1], they list the below 5 patents which are still active until 2033

AutoStore alleges Ocado is infringing on the following five patents: 10,093,525[2], 10,294,025[3], 10,474,140[4], 10,494,239[5], and 10,696,478[6].

[1] https://www.therobotreport.com/autostore-sues-ocado-over-as-...

[2] https://patents.google.com/patent/US10093525

[3] https://patents.google.com/patent/US10294025

[4] https://patents.google.com/patent/US10474140

[5] https://patents.google.com/patent/US10494239

[6] https://patents.google.com/patent/US10696478

⬐ Animats

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

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

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

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.

⬐ sriram_malhar

I agree with what you are saying, and I would like to know why people are downvoting your comment.

⬐ contingencies

My conclusion is there is a massively over-represented, inexperienced ROS-oriented robotics community in the west and on HN that believes ML + ROS + third party hardware = whole robotics field. They have less experience implementing custom hardware/mechanical thus fail to consider its possibilities.

⬐ contingencies

Classic HN: deep and current experience in a given problem domain - I literally spend all day designing robots - and you get downvoted. Go play with your ROS, ML kids.

⬐ akircher

Ocado uses a white-label (or close derivitive) of the Autostore Microfulfillment System https://autostoresystem.com/system/ which is one of the most popular microfulfillment solutions today https://brittainladd.com/what-is-the-best-micro-fulfillment-... and has been around for ~20 years.

⬐ cptskippy

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.

⬐ PeterisP

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

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

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

That's an augmented reality sandbox! You can make one yourself: https://arsandbox.ucdavis.edu/

⬐ geerlingguy

A lot of local science centers / children's museums have this kind of setup somewhere, and more often than not, I've seen a Kinect hanging out somewhere doing the topographic mapping.

⬐ typon

GPUs formed the backbone of machine learning. Gamers moving society forward :)

⬐ kregasaurusrex

It's a versatile piece of hardware! As long as you're not trying to get granular object detection less than a foot away it's able to see features with a fair amount of detail.

⬐ glasss

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.

⬐ mdip

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

The tape system was really interesting to me during the short time that it was there (upgraded shortly after I started); I didn't expect to be able to find any useful information on it but surprisingly, an old IBM Promo video exists on YouTube.

If you're interested in seeing what it looks like, I put it at 1:04, since that's where the 3D rendered exterior view starts. They can be extended and ours was much longer than that one in the video if memory serves (one end to the other of a complete DC floor diagonally; it forced a really odd layout for the original mainframe, cabinets, and then ultimately the tape library that replaced it).

Link: https://youtu.be/GwMn7YpF8r8?t=64

Without the playback position: https://youtu.be/GwMn7YpF8r8

⬐ lorepieri

Can you share the references you mention at point 1? Thanks!

⬐ mdip

I wanted to include a link directly to it on the last post but couldn't find it after a few searches. I had originally read about it in the context of Tesla's automation failures (or, possibly, some of the issues around auto-pilot). It referenced a post-mortem style paper analysing the the failures and where GM failed to realize that factory automation is a "hard problem" back in the 80s.

I couldn't find the original paper that I read, but found an article with a myriad of links that explains the situation better (and will likely lead to a lot more) at https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/04/experts-say-tesla-has-r...

⬐ mdip

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.

⬐ djhworld

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.

⬐ beardyw

Yesterday our large Waitrose order got delivered to our neighbour who has 24 hour carers on rotation. Turns out they took it in without questioning it. We complained our order hadn't arrived and they re-picked it and delivered a few hours later. So the last mile (or 9 in this case) is also important!

⬐ Cthulhu_

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.

⬐ deepserket

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.

⬐ kortex

Food factories are FIFO, and you want FIFO dispensing, so I can only imagine the optimal solution is FIFO transport. I could readily imagine "magazines" for anything coming in cardboard boxes - spring or gravity fed, high-aspect ratio stacks in some kind of frame. Specially built container trucks which are easy to load with these "food mags". 6Axis robots to load them into the factory.

Spent mags get put into an empty trailer and sent back to the factory.

Loose bag items are trickier, but if you put those in reusable plastic totes, and put those in the mags, and automatically eject them into another mag, I think it would work well with the existing suction arm ones.

⬐ jpindar

Are you picturing something like a firearm magazine? Because those are LIFO.

⬐ kortex

No, a queue, like a clip (actual clip not a small-arms magazine, which as you mention are push-down LIFO).

⬐ Animats

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.

⬐ monkeydust

"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

We also use Ocado, and I have noticed this exact same side effect. Still a great service overall though.

⬐ conductr

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.

⬐ samename

This could be a benefit and help households stick fo a budget, right? New product discovery is important, but isn’t that what ads are for?

⬐ prawn

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

Store was probably Argos?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argos_(retailer)

Still going - but an increasing % of their sales are online.

⬐ prawn

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

Remarkably Argos has been going with the same catalogue model for 50 years.

⬐ SilverRed

I wonder if this means we could reduce the amount of packaging and ink used. And just stuff products in brown boxes without the need for reflective inks and plastic viewing window.

⬐ shireboy

...and then an industry of hacking warehouses and delivery drones for fun and profit crops up.

⬐ dharmab

The "employee picks products for you" system is how most stores worked before the modern supermarket was invented.

⬐ Dracophoenix

Looks like we're reinventing ourselves, just like with timesharing/the cloud.

⬐ reggieband

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.

⬐ corentin88

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

> I’d be curious to see something similar in Amazon’s warehouse.

Here you are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nKPC-WmLjU

⬐ tzs

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.

⬐ asah

OMG this looks so inefficient compared with OP.

I'm guessing the difference is that grocery stores handle 20-50,000 different SKUs while Amazon has to handle 100,000s+.

⬐ mypalmike

I suspect it's more efficient. The Amazon video mentioned that they found randomizing bin locations to be more efficient than any grouping. That's not particularly surprising when one considers that many non-physical storage algorithms benefit from randomization, but it's kind of fascinating that the physical storage of goods is a chaotic mess apart from the database that maps products to bins.

⬐ dkjaudyeqooe

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

Seems like any other bot could push it to the edge. It just requires a failed robot to default to a neutral gear.

⬐ lucb1e

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

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.

⬐ KingMachiavelli

Reminds me of the Sibyl System in Psycho Pass.

https://youtu.be/LyQpY6UWs2E http://cdn26.us1.fansshare.com/photo/psychopass/sybil-system...

⬐ Dracophoenix

I see you're a man of culture. In all seriousness, brains aside, the resemblance is striking.

⬐ hk1337

I wonder what the budget comparison is to just hiring people to do it?

⬐ brutus1213

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.

⬐ somethoughts

Its interesting that on the outside of the building there are still quite a few cars in the parking lot.

⬐ cptskippy

They didn't show you how trucks were unloaded into those bins. It's not using robots.

⬐ imglorp

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.

⬐ cptskippy

Pallets shift in trucks, often requiring the warehouse crew to climb in and untangle things.

Also trucks are often dropping off a few pallets and not unloading entirely. The warehouse crew talk with the driver, sign way bills, and other things.

Yes these things could be solved but not by one company or quickly.

⬐ Razengan

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.

⬐ SilverRed

This sounds like the future for high crime areas. Online ordering or vending style storefronts where you pick on a screen or with your phone and it drops a bag out the front with your items.

⬐ ksec

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?

⬐ jonplackett

Robots are over-rated.

Always good to have an underlying Robert instead.

⬐ jameshart

See this response to Fiat’s ‘Hand built by robots’ slogan of the early eighties: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU-tuY0Z7nQ

⬐ jonplackett

ha! that's genius

⬐ wokinoozle

Speaking as an underlying Robert, I have to agree. It's always better to have one of us around.

⬐ Razengan

Starting a new account on HN for a joke eh, I wish you the best.

⬐ michaelt

> 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

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

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?

⬐ rvense

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

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.

⬐ Cthulhu_

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

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

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

Do the humans only exist to staff the warehouse?

⬐ dkjaudyeqooe

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

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.

⬐ snarf21

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.

⬐ lucb1e

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.

⬐ dsign

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.

⬐ dageshi

Probably less environmentally damaging than an equivalent human work force to do the same job I'm guessing.

⬐ Shmebulock

Would be interesting to compare this to the environmental impact of having human workers

⬐ mongol

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

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

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

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.

⬐ autoexec

> 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...?

The issue here is that the human needs the same amount of energy no matter what he's tasked with. Ideally robots will mean humans will be spending their time on fewer menial tasks, but the environmental impact of a living human is the same no matter if they're stocking shelves or doing any other job.

Robots might be able to give some environmental improvements in the workplace though. The areas they inhabit don't need to be well lit or heated/cooled for human comfort, but that's only true for places and times where humans can be removed entirely. Even in a fully automated warehouse the moment a repair person comes in, or a janitor, or a exterminator, or any human employee you have to accommodate their safety and comfort.

I suspect the additional efficiency of machines will just make it faster and easier for people to consume irresponsibility produced and packaged goods

⬐ irjustin

Xbox vision!

⬐ the42thdoctor

What types of algorithms are used in this type of problems ?

⬐ dkjaudyeqooe

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

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

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

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

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.

⬐ CodeGlitch

I would put money of them using OpenCV and the assorted algos in that library for their vision work.

⬐ DaiPlusPlus

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.

⬐ None

None

⬐ asteroidbelt

They must have fired a thousand people when built that.

That happens when your min wages are high.

Also, UBI seems to be inevitable.

⬐ GrumpyNl

Is AI really needed for this?

⬐ GrumpyNl

Why the downvote, i would really like to know and how it would be applied.

⬐ jonplackett

would think it's for optimising the paths of the robots on the grid.

⬐ lucb1e

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.

⬐ recursive

When did "AI" come to be a synonym for machine learning? I missed the memo. I thought it was a fuzzy piece of marketing jargon.

⬐ lucb1e

Couple years ago when people started doing machine learning for applications like computer vision in more visible, consumer-facing products and then marketing started calling it AI as well as, gradually, any software program that does something useful or seemingly clever with some degree of automation?

⬐ PeterisP

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.

⬐ maqnius

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

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

Are supermarket workers under payed?

⬐ JoeAltmaier

Yes

⬐ TheFreim

How so?

⬐ JoeAltmaier

Poverty wage.

⬐ Razengan

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

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).

⬐ Razengan

Once you free people from mundane jobs, they might have more time for social interaction.

⬐ dvh

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.

⬐ maltalex

> 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...).

⬐ turnerc

Their H12021 results suggest otherwise https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/OCDO/half-y...

⬐ JoeAltmaier

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

`(5038)/10=120.` What robot component do you think costs more than that?

⬐ helsinkiandrew

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.

⬐ helsinkiandrew

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

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

⬐ michaelt

Technically, self-adhesive LED strips are PCBs distributed on reels of tape.

⬐ the-dude

Whole PCBs are mostly distributed in trays, from which they are picked and placed.

⬐ geerlingguy

When I got my first Raspberry Pi Picos, I got three in a row cut out from a reel. I don't think you'd get ATX motherboards this way, but I do see smaller boards come that way nowadays.

⬐ janekm

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

⬐ glasss

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.

⬐ arcturus17

How could he be so imaginative and even prescient for some things, and yet think that at 9B the world would be overpopulated? I mean, if you’re playing with that concept why not crank it up to 20 or 30?

⬐ AngryData

Perhaps he didn't imagine artificial fertilizer so cheap that over 60% of the worlds crop yield was the direct result of it. If we used 80% or more naturally sourced fertilizer 9 billion seems a reasonable estimate.

⬐ kinjba11

Caves of Steel was published in 1953. Back in those times, population dynamics weren't as widely known. The world had just passed 2.5 billion and naive rates would put it at 9 billion over a hundred years later.

It seems like old science fiction authors regularly set the time of their worlds much closer to now than reasonable for some reason. To be more relatable perhaps? Blade Runner was set in 2019 for example: fully synthetic humans, flying cars, wars in space. None of that happened. Then there's 1984 by Orwell, and I'm sure dozens of other examples if you looked. Still waiting for that hoverboard (Back to the Future 2 was set in 2015).

⬐ 41b696ef1113

Farming is massively more productive than it used to be owing to changes in both plant varieties, fertilizers, pest control, and mechanization.

This link[1] suggests that historical yields of corn were ~2 tonnes/hectare in the 1940s vs ~10 tonnes/hectare today.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields

⬐ aliasEli

This video fails to answer the question how many X's does it require to screw in a light-bulb.

⬐ brainwipe

HN do you agree with Tom Scott's definition of a robot?

⬐ WillDaSilva

In digging into whether the hive/hivemind is one robot or many, and whether our gut bacteria are part of us, Tom has basically stumbled into the illusion of the self as a distinct thing from the rest of reality.

The idea that we all have (numerical) personal identities, and not merely qualitative identities, is very appealing to most people. I think that's the largest reason the concept of a soul or individual spirit is so widespread - we want to be able to create a hard-line division between us and the rest of reality. But that division is imaginary.

Whether we consider it to be one robot or many, or whether we consider our gut bacteria to be part of us or not should then be a matter of pragmatic semantics. Instead of asking "is the division there/real?" we should ask "is this imaginary division useful?".

For the case of the hive/hivemind, I think it might make more sense for a repair technician, for instance, to think of each physical unit as a separate robot, but a developer for the hivemind might find it more useful to think about the whole system as a single entity.