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A robot collision sparked a fire at the UK's top online grocer
Ocado was forced to cancel orders after three of its bots collided to cause a warehouse fire.
Amazon boosts its UK grocery delivery service
Amazon's UK fresh food delivery service is rolling out to a number of new cities, including Glasgow, Newcastle and Liverpool. Rounding out the list is Sheffield and Portsmouth with more, currently unspecified, locations coming online later in the year. This is good news for Amazon as it tries to make a dent in the UK's deeply competitive grocery market, and for Morrisons, its retail partner. As part of the wider rollout, Morrisons gets the ability to sell its wares straight to Amazon customers through the Prime Now app and website.
Ocado’s Alexa skill lets you call out your shopping list
With Amazon now a major player in the UK grocery market, supermarkets have been forced to adapt or risk losing some of that all important market share. Some have mimicked their rival by offering one-hour deliveries, while others have attempted to match the online retailer's technological prowess. Already a pioneer of grocery-sorting robots and autonomous deliveries, Ocado has stepped things up a notch, today becoming the first UK supermarket to launch a dedicated Amazon Alexa skill.
Ocado's driverless delivery van is a glimpse of the future
Filmers and photographers line the street, their fingers hovering over camera shutter buttons. "Any second now," an engineer mutters nearby, eyes glued to a smartphone screen tracking the truck's location. The group collectively takes a deep breath and then, suddenly, the CargoPod glides into view. It rounds the corner silently before drifting up an empty boulevard and into a nearby side-street. The van's arrival is, to be honest, a little anticlimactic. With its small cockpit and large, boxy back, it resembles a milk float from the early 1960s, rather than a cutting-edge piece of autonomous transportation. Still, looks can be deceiving.
A supermarket thinks it can create the most advanced robot known to man
Online-only supermarket Ocado is a household name in the UK, and some of you undoubtedly rely on the service to deliver your weekly shop. Something you're unlikely to be aware of, however, is Ocado's work in cutting-edge robotics research. (No, seriously.) A special division of the company looks at technology that'll ultimately benefit its grocery delivery business. And currently, that arm is involved in developing a robot that would make the most advanced automatons around right now look like Furbies. The SecondHands program aims to build a robot that'll effectively become an Ocado warehouse employee, aiding technicians that work in these mammoth sorting offices with equipment repair and all manner of other tasks.
