Humanoid robot known as SecondHands to pass spanners and move ladders for technicians at online grocery specialist

Ocado is to test a humanoid maintenance assistant in its warehouses, in the online grocery specialist’s latest move to reduce reliance on human workers.

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The SecondHands robot prototype, which resembles a cousin of Star Wars’ C3P0 with a wheeled platform instead of legs, is designed to assist engineers looking after the company’s handling systems. The aim is to use artificial intelligence to predict the technician’s needs and hand them tools or move ladders or bolts.

The robot and its operational software, including speech recognition, were developed at the Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), in southern Germany. Ocado is also working with researchers at University College London, the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and Sapienza University in Rome on systems that can recognise and interpret human actions and decide how to help.

Graham Deacon, robotics research team leader at Ocado, said the aim was to develop a robot that could help without prompting in “a fluid and natural interaction between robot and technician”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ocado’s almost C3PO-style robot SecondHands lends a helping hand. Photograph: Ocado

Ocado, which delivers groceries for Waitrose and Morrisons, has invested millions of pounds in developing technology to manage home deliveries for global grocery retailers. In November, it signed its first big international contract to develop a robotic warehouse for the French supermarket Groupe Casino.

Its newest warehouse in Andover, Hampshire, uses hundreds of battery-powered robots to shift boxes of groceries stored in a giant grid.

The group is also developing packing robots that can grasp many types of products, from potentially dangerous bottles of bleach to fragile avocados and eggs.

Retailers have used automated warehouse systems for years but the involvement of robots is expected to step up dramatically as technology gets smarter and labour costs rise.

Last year, a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers said more than 10 million workers in the UK were at risk of having their jobs rendered obsolete by automation in the next 15 years, About 2.25 million of them work in retail and distribution.

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