Ocado hits the north for new DCs

Ocado is on the look out for two new distribution centres, one between London and Birmingham and another in the north of England.

The online retailer has warehouses in south east London, Andover, Hatfield and Dordon, near Tamworth. Its latest facilities use a new robotic system which it claims is capable of picking a wide range of grocery products from the 50,000 different items available on Ocado.com. This uses a proprietary computer vision system designed by the Ocado Technology robotics research team to calculate grasping points for a given item without requiring a 3D model of the object to be picked.

Ocado has also licenced the technology to a number of international grocers, including Kroger in the US and Groupe Casino in France.

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