Smart Robotics for Crisis Resilient Food Fulfilment Centre Operations

在当前的COVID-19疫情期间，食品和杂货零售业不堪重负，及时、安全地履行客户订单尤其具有挑战性。在此期间，网上购物增长了74%，大大增加了全国各地物流中心的工作量。其中一个主要原因是，大部分劳动仍然主要由人类完成，自动化和机器人的采用率很低。机器人精通特定的、可重复的任务，这些任务是它们被编程的。要让这些系统做其他事情，需要昂贵、耗时的重新编程，并需要一系列复杂、复杂的软件和硬件解决方案。Smartia是工业智能和自动化方面的专家，旨在在该项目中为食品零售行业建立一个具有成本效益和可扩展的演示器。通过使用机器人和人工智能，这可以将配送中心的吞吐量提高20%，从而缩短交货时间。在短期内，该项目将有利于零售履行中心的后端活动，但从中长期来看，该技术可以用于食品加工和先进制造业等其他行业。具体的创新包括将物体检测人工智能模型与使用Smartia智能平台MAIO的机器人系统集成在一起，用于自动化食品和杂货订单准备的按需取货任务。所提出的解决方案提供了比其他解决方案高得多的定制和多功能性，并允许将增量功能添加到自动化系统中。该项目将受益于Smartia工业智能平台MAIO超过15年的研究和开发。Smartia拥有开发、集成和营销解决方案的完全自由，并且可以访问构建演示器所需的物理系统。英国食品和杂货零售市场每年价值400亿英镑。基于英国的1000个履行中心，这项创新的市场估计为每年1亿英镑。在全球范围内，这个机会估计为每年50亿英镑。进入市场的途径将是通过我们的软件即服务商业模式，所有客户都可以使用该功能。该解决方案的硬件组件将通过联想（Lenovo）和Automata Technologies等合作伙伴公司提供。Smartia将利用其与联想的渠道合作伙伴关系来扩大市场，该公司得益于与约翰•刘易斯（John Lewis）和阿斯达（Asda）等许多大型零售商的牢固关系。

The food and groceries retail industry has been overwhelmed during the current COVID-19 epidemic and fulfilling customer orders in a timely and safe manner has been particularly challenging. Online shopping has seen a 74% increase during this period, significantly increasing the workload at fulfilment centres around the country. One of the main reasons is that the bulk of the labour is still largely done by humans and the adoption of automation and robotics is low. Robots are proficient at specific, repeatable tasks for which they are programmed. To get these systems to do something else takes expensive, time-consuming reprogramming and requires a series of complex, sophisticated software and hardware solutions. Smartia are experts in industrial intelligence and automation, and aim to build a cost effective and scalable demonstrator for the food retail industry in this project. This could increase fulfilment centres throughput by 20% thus reducing delivery times, through the use of robotics and AI. In the short term the project will benefit backend activity at retail fulfilment centres but the technology could be used across other industries like food processing and advanced manufacturing in the medium to long term. The specific innovation consists of the integration of an object detection AI model with a robotic system using Smartia's intelligent platform MAIO, for on-demand pick-and-place tasks for automated food and groceries order preparation.The solution proposed offers a much higher level of customisation and versatility than other solutions and will allow incremental abilities to be added to the automated system.The project will benefit from more than 15 man-years of research and development in MAIO, Smartia's industrial intelligence platform.Smartia has complete freedom to develop, integrate and market the solution that will be developed and has access to the physical systems required to build the demonstrator. The UK food and groceries retail market worth £40billion/year. The market for the innovation is estimated to be £100million/year based on 1000 fulfilment centres in the UK. Globally the opportunity is estimated at £5billion/year. The route to market would be via our Software as a Service business model, with the capabilities available to all customers. The hardware components of the solution would be offered through partner companies such as Lenovo and Automata Technologies.Smartia would leverage its channel partnership with Lenovo to grow the market where it benefits from strong relationships with many large retailers including John Lewis (Waitrose) and Asda.