DOOM: Ocado wants its robots to walk into your kitchen

[AtW]

“Ocado is to start designing robots that can enter a customer’s house and place their shopping in the kitchen.

The FTSE 100 online grocer has invested £10 million in Oxbotica, a start-up spun out of the University of Oxford in 2014 that creates self-driving software that can be added to different vehicles and robots. Its autonomous technology works in several industries, including mining and oil refineries.

The investment will enable Ocado and Oxbotica to work together to create autonomous vehicles that can operate around warehouses, as well as self-driving vans that can deliver shopping to a customer’s door, and “kerb-to-kitchen robots”. These robots are part of Ocado’s goal to ensure that handling and delivering food can be “without human touch”, Alex Harvey, chief of advancedtechnology at Ocado technology, said.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/o...chen-gz6q7glkv

First they come into your kitchen...

[jamesbrown]

First they come into your kitchen...

They’re already in MF’s bedroom.

[AtW]

They’re already in MF’s bedroom.

For essential maintenance?

[_V_]

This kind of thing?

[OwlHoot]

This kind of thing?

Looks quite crude and creepy, but I reckon in 30 years (sooner or later anyway) you'll be able to sit in a cradle, like a joey in a kangaroo's pouch, and be carried smoothly at 40 MPH by one of them!

Talking about kangaroos, it might actually be more efficient to have a hopping robot, just like a 'roo that can effortlessly bounce hundreds of miles a day. One only hopes they will be programmed not to hop while under any low bridges!

If you think about it, foot-based robot transport will mean less landscape room occupied, and less need to maintain, roads. In a hundred years tarmac roads might be almost a thing of the past and we're mostly back to medievil trackways!

[jamesbrown]

For essential maintenance?

He's got a thing about robots calling him "big boned".