Ocado's robotic workforce can fulfil a 50 item order in five minutes, the firm claims

A fleet of 3,000 washing machine-like robots working inside Ocado's London warehouse can fill a 50-item grocery order in just five minutes, the firm claims. They travel along a grid inside the 563,000 square foot London warehouse and are controlled'like pieces on a chessboard' by an AI air traffic controller. As they move along the board, coming within a fraction of an inch of each other, they grab items and prepare them to be delivered to the customer in a process that can take just 15 minutes to process an order with 99 per cent accuracy, Ocado claims. The British online supermarket is now as much a technology company as it is a grocer, licensing its automation system to retailers around the world. Ocado's chief of advanced technology, Alex Harvey, said the eventual goal is to become fully automated and have items'out the door without a single human touch.'