Time: Event begins at 7pm

Speaker: Alex Harvey

Ocado’s innovation journey has entailed developing some of the most advanced and disruptive robotic systems in the world.

The company’s highly automated warehouses feature the densest storage and retrieval robotic system in the world where thousands of bots collaborate like a swarm to collect customer orders.

Two other grand challenges are developing robotic systems that can pick and pack 54,000 items in the warehouse and that can deliver the groceries from the kerb to the kitchen. Such robotic systems are beyond the state of the art today.

The use cases that are afforded by the grand challenges within grocery logistics act as an incredibly useful analogue for some of the challenges facing society today.

This talk will explore how these pioneering technologies, competencies and know-how have the potential to positively disrupt many other sectors for wider societal impact.

Alex Harvey is Head of Robotics and Autonomous Systems at Ocado, where his wide-ranging responsibilities include the technology development of Ocado’s proprietary warehousing automation and overseeing teams of researchers in robotics, 3D vision, simulation and 3D visualisation.

This is a joint meeting with the IoP.

To reserve a place, please contact Dr Diane Crann at d.crann@herts.ac.uk