Oxbotica Develop Self-drive Vehicles for Ocado Deliveries

For the first time in the UK, Ocado have trialled driverless vehicles for deliveries. The vehicles used have been created by Oxbotica; a robotics developer in Oxford, cofounded by Pembroke Fellow and Tutor in Engineering, Professor Ingmar Posner and BP Professor of Information Engineering at the University of Oxford, Professor Paul Newman.

The trialled vehicle or ‘CargoPod’, unlike Ocado’s current vans, which store eighty grocery boxes to serve over twenty deliveries and are staffed by a driver, hold only eight boxes and require the customer to collect the shopping when the vehicle arrives at their house. The method is perhaps not as convenient, but ultimately it is cheaper and possible to scale up quickly.

This is how it works: after they have placed their order, the recipient is notified when the ‘CargoPod’ has been loaded up from a warehouse located about one mile from their address, and once again when it has safely arrived outside their door. The customer then presses a button to unlock their box and collect their shopping from the vehicle.  

We caught up with Prof. Posner, who commented:

“It has been an absolute pleasure to work with our partners at Ocado and the Gateway Consortium to deliver the autonomous last mile in Woolwich. This is, of course, only the very beginning of our aspirations in this space but the tech has worked flawlessly over the past two weeks and the customer response has been overwhelmingly positive. What a privilege to work with such a team!” 

Watch a short video which captures the trial here.

The trial required the presence of two people in the vehicle to supervise, and Ocado and Oxbotica envision that we will see an official, commercial launch by 2019. Watch this space!

This remarkable news has received national news coverage, such as the BBC and the Guardian.