WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

1
00:00:00.220 --> 00:00:03.030
- This is a grocery packing warehouse
in the south-east of London.

2
00:00:03.030 --> 00:00:05.671
Folks have ordered their groceries online,
and instead of people walking

3
00:00:05.671 --> 00:00:09.030
up and down the aisles of a
traditional grocery store to pick up items,

4
00:00:09.030 --> 00:00:13.440
these little devices move more than
a million items every day between them.

5
00:00:13.440 --> 00:00:16.640
Instead of trying to build machines
that fit into a world designed for humans,

6
00:00:16.640 --> 00:00:20.190
this entire facility, the size
of seven football fields,

7
00:00:20.190 --> 00:00:22.750
is custom-built to make this
as efficient as possible.

8
00:00:22.750 --> 00:00:25.010
I cannot get across on camera

9
00:00:25.010 --> 00:00:29.710
just how incredibly large
this whole place is.

10
00:00:29.710 --> 00:00:32.570
The top speed of those boxes
is about 14 kilometres an hour

11
00:00:32.570 --> 00:00:35.287
and they pass within five millimetres
of each other when they move.

12
00:00:35.287 --> 00:00:39.590
So: how many robots are there
in the Hive?

13
00:00:39.920 --> 00:00:42.265
Well, that depends on how you count them.

14
00:00:42.265 --> 00:00:44.884
- What you're looking at
behind me is the Hive.

15
00:00:44.884 --> 00:00:48.150
We've got the grid, which
is the metal structure,

16
00:00:48.150 --> 00:00:49.570
it's filled with products,

17
00:00:49.570 --> 00:00:52.377
so that product is housed
within what we call totes

18
00:00:52.377 --> 00:00:56.050
or these open boxes that you can see
at the top of the grid.

19
00:00:56.050 --> 00:00:58.890
We have around 2,300 bots

20
00:00:58.890 --> 00:01:00.740
and they move the stock
around the warehouse,

21
00:01:00.740 --> 00:01:04.140
so that we can pair it up with
customer orders to be delivered.

22
00:01:04.140 --> 00:01:06.670
The bots will move in
the X and Y direction,

23
00:01:06.670 --> 00:01:08.730
they can also move in the Z direction.

24
00:01:08.730 --> 00:01:10.810
So we have a cable hoist system.

25
00:01:10.810 --> 00:01:13.890
That means that they can
lower down a gripper assembly

26
00:01:13.890 --> 00:01:16.850
and grab onto the stock
that we have in the grid.

27
00:01:16.850 --> 00:01:21.540
In some areas we have as deep
as 21 totes, all in a line.

28
00:01:21.540 --> 00:01:23.410
We have sensors underneath the bot,

29
00:01:23.410 --> 00:01:27.440
that mean that every time it passes
over one of the squares on the grid,

30
00:01:27.440 --> 00:01:28.940
it has a laser underneath it,

31
00:01:28.940 --> 00:01:30.890
that can tell when it
moves over that cell.

32
00:01:30.890 --> 00:01:34.850
So it will say "I passed a cell,
I passed a cell, I passed a cell."

33
00:01:34.850 --> 00:01:39.530
We have around 58,000 different types
of individual products within the grid.

34
00:01:39.530 --> 00:01:41.780
We'll use the huge amounts
of data that we gather

35
00:01:41.780 --> 00:01:44.783
to understand what customers
are most likely to order

36
00:01:44.783 --> 00:01:48.160
and place them in the easiest
to reach locations for bots.

37
00:01:48.160 --> 00:01:50.590
All of that combined means
that we can have stock

38
00:01:50.590 --> 00:01:53.670
into the warehouse and out
again from our suppliers,

39
00:01:53.670 --> 00:01:55.934
into a delivery van,
in just five hours.

40
00:01:55.934 --> 00:01:58.780
- The robots deliver their crates
over to the packing area.

41
00:01:58.780 --> 00:02:02.720
Some of that packing is done by humans,
but there are mechanical arms as well.

42
00:02:02.720 --> 00:02:04.210
One of the big problems
they've got to solve

43
00:02:04.210 --> 00:02:06.972
is that grocery packaging
is designed for people,

44
00:02:06.972 --> 00:02:09.090
and the interactions
between all the objects

45
00:02:09.090 --> 00:02:10.840
they deal with can be...
complicated.

46
00:02:10.840 --> 00:02:13.590
- Currently, we're standing
underneath the grid structure

47
00:02:13.590 --> 00:02:15.900
that we saw earlier.
The robots that we saw

48
00:02:15.900 --> 00:02:18.498
are actually dropping off
products to the station.

49
00:02:18.498 --> 00:02:20.860
Once they're dropped off,
they become in control of the robot

50
00:02:20.860 --> 00:02:22.410
and the robot decides how to pick them,

51
00:02:22.410 --> 00:02:25.990
before the grid robot picks up their tote
and takes it away again.

52
00:02:25.990 --> 00:02:27.990
There's two 3D cameras above the totes,

53
00:02:27.990 --> 00:02:31.272
so it takes an image of the storage box
before it picks from it

54
00:02:31.272 --> 00:02:32.650
decides on the best grasp point,

55
00:02:32.650 --> 00:02:34.270
confirm that the product is correct,

56
00:02:34.270 --> 00:02:36.200
and then place it into
a customer's shopping

57
00:02:36.200 --> 00:02:38.860
and it's doing all of that
on live customer orders.

58
00:02:38.860 --> 00:02:40.923
We make sure that we don't
mix something that was heavy

59
00:02:40.923 --> 00:02:42.260
with something that's soft.

60
00:02:42.260 --> 00:02:43.710
There are things that
the robot can't pack,

61
00:02:43.710 --> 00:02:47.190
things such as very, very heavy,
very large or very fragile items,

62
00:02:47.190 --> 00:02:49.110
but there's a lot of
range in between that.

63
00:02:49.110 --> 00:02:52.532
- It's fairly safe to call each
individual packing arm "a robot". 

64
00:02:52.532 --> 00:02:54.040
Each one has a
separate controller

65
00:02:54.040 --> 00:02:56.280
and it has to make a lot
of decisions in real time

66
00:02:56.280 --> 00:02:58.920
using cameras and sensors
on each individual arm.

67
00:02:58.920 --> 00:03:01.871
But here in the Hive,
it's not quite as simple.

68
00:03:01.871 --> 00:03:05.680
- Controlling all of this is what
we refer to as the Hive Mind,

69
00:03:05.680 --> 00:03:09.910
so this artificial intelligence system
that controls everything.

70
00:03:09.910 --> 00:03:11.240
Once the stock comes in,

71
00:03:11.240 --> 00:03:14.010
from that exact point
that it enters the system,

72
00:03:14.010 --> 00:03:16.550
the Hive Mind will track
its every single movement.

73
00:03:16.550 --> 00:03:20.170
The Hive Mind will tell the bots
exactly where they need to stop,

74
00:03:20.170 --> 00:03:22.110
but it is the bot's control system

75
00:03:22.110 --> 00:03:25.030
that allows it to follow
a movement profile

76
00:03:25.030 --> 00:03:27.992
and stop exactly as the
hive mind expects it to.

77
00:03:27.992 --> 00:03:30.830
There's just a 5mm gap
between bots,

78
00:03:30.830 --> 00:03:35.320
so that's both as they pass each other
and if they stop next to a bot as well.

79
00:03:35.320 --> 00:03:37.130
This bot with the orange light

80
00:03:37.130 --> 00:03:39.740
may have experienced
something within its sensors

81
00:03:39.740 --> 00:03:41.810
and all of those readings it's taking,

82
00:03:41.810 --> 00:03:44.650
that when it feeds that
back to the Hive Mind,

83
00:03:44.650 --> 00:03:47.450
it's not quite what the
Hive Mind was expecting,

84
00:03:47.450 --> 00:03:50.740
so it just brings it to a
safe stop for investigation.

85
00:03:50.740 --> 00:03:55.480
We do have a number of grid operators
that sit at the edge of the grid

86
00:03:55.480 --> 00:03:59.650
and they're able to use our CCTV system
that we have above the grid

87
00:03:59.650 --> 00:04:02.380
to look at exactly what's
going on with that bot

88
00:04:02.380 --> 00:04:06.416
and they can try and fix that remotely
and send commands to the bot wirelessly.

89
00:04:06.416 --> 00:04:09.707
- The boundary between "individual"
and "group" is a little blurry.

90
00:04:09.707 --> 00:04:12.760
Is a termite colony a collection of
individuals working together,

91
00:04:12.760 --> 00:04:14.090
or one big superorganism?

92
00:04:14.090 --> 00:04:16.323
Is the microbiome in
your gut part of you?

93
00:04:16.323 --> 00:04:19.050
Because in the last couple of decades
scientists have started to work out

94
00:04:19.050 --> 00:04:23.400
that the bacteria in your digestive system
produce and consume neurotransmitters

95
00:04:23.400 --> 00:04:24.980
that affect how you think.

96
00:04:24.980 --> 00:04:29.054
But most people wouldn't consider
their gut bacteria to be "part of them".

97
00:04:29.054 --> 00:04:31.560
We tend to ascribe
intelligence and identity

98
00:04:31.560 --> 00:04:33.450
to things that act at roughly our scale.

99
00:04:33.450 --> 00:04:34.670
It's easy to look at the Hive,

100
00:04:34.670 --> 00:04:37.861
see the moving boxes and go,
"okay, 2000 robots".

101
00:04:37.861 --> 00:04:39.571
But with only one controller

102
00:04:39.571 --> 00:04:42.190
and the boxes just following
the paths they're given,

103
00:04:42.190 --> 00:04:43.199
I'd say there's a good
argument that

104
00:04:43.199 --> 00:04:45.026
that is one robot...

105
00:04:45.026 --> 00:04:47.806
with 2,000 ways to
interact with the world.

106
00:04:48.253 --> 00:04:50.471
Thank you so much to
everyone here at Ocado.

107
00:04:50.471 --> 00:04:51.600
There is a link to them

108
00:04:51.600 --> 00:04:54.163
and more about their
technology in the description.