https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/18/22582454/robot-collision-ocado-warehouse-england-fire-delayed-orders

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Filed under:

  * Tech
  * Robot

Robot collision at Ocado warehouse near London sparks fire, delaying
customer orders

The online-only UK grocer said no one was injured and damage was
limited

By Kim Lyons Jul 18, 2021, 11:30am EDT

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[jvincent_1] Photo by James Vincent / The Verge

Online-only British supermarket Ocado has had to cancel some
customers' delivery orders after a Friday robot collision at one of
its warehouses caused a fire, the company said.

The fire at the company's Erith warehouse east of London "appears to
have been caused by the collision of three bots on the grid," the
company said in a statement on Sunday. No one was injured, and the
damage was limited to less than 1 percent of its grid, according to
Ocado.

The grocer's warehouses are populated with washing machine-sized
robots that move products around on a grid system. The Verge's James
Vincent wrote about Ocado's plans in a 2018 feature story. He
described the process:

    Deliveries are unpacked into crates; crates are placed onto
    conveyors; and conveyors carry the crates to shelves, where human
    "pickers" take what they need to fill customers' orders. The new
    paradigm, though, is all about using space as efficiently as
    possible. Items are still placed in crates, but those crates are
    now stored in huge stacks, up to 17 boxes high. Their position in
    this stack seems to be at random -- a box of razors next to cod
    fillets, for example -- but it's algorithmically decided; with
    frequently accessed items placed on the top and rarer purchases
    near the bottom. On top of this hoard, the robots do their work.

Robots at Ocado's warehouses operate on grids. Three of the robots
collided at its Erith warehouse on July 16th, causing a fire that has
disrupted operations.

The company said Sunday that the Erith plant, which processes some
150,000 orders a week according to the Financial Times, should
restart operations in the next few days. "While we expect some
disruption to operations, we are working to restore normal service as
soon as possible," the company said. "We expect the facility to begin
operating within the coming week and thank customers whose orders are
affected for their patience."

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