How many robots does it take to run a grocery store?

I thought this was an interesting insight into what a fully-automated grocery store looks like. And also wild to think about how different things are when you design them for automation from the ground up. ▶ this video

Tom Scott had a good video a couple of weeks ago about a grocery packing warehouse that has a sophisticated picking network: ▶ this video

Great, now let's (gradually) get rid of all surface parking lots and build hyper-optimized multi-floor parking setups not made for human driving. A sort of Ocado Grocery Warehouse [1] for cars. [1]: ▶ this video As always, yes I know this already exists in Japan.

> With online shopping and delivery, the warehouse can be a dark, cramped, hot, robot-filled pandemonium in the worst part of town. Tom Scott - How many robots does it take to run a grocery store? ▶ this video (grocery fulfillment centers are different than Amazon) ... It's also coldish. link

> or a waiter serving food at a restaurant, Over the last few years, I've seen a few in use here in Berlin: link > or someone who restocks shelves at grocery stores For physical retail, or home delivery? People are working on this for traditional stores, but I can't tell which news stories are real and which are hype — after around a decade of Musk promising FSD within a year or so, I know not to simply trust press releases even when they have a video of the thing apparently working. For home delivery, this is mostly kinda solved: ▶ this video > Plus, in the case of service work like being a waiter, I imagine some customers will always be willing to pay for a human face. Sure… if they have the money. But can we make an economy where all the stuff is free, and we're "working" n-hours a day smiling at bad jokes and manners of people we don't like, so we can earn money to spend to convince someone else who doesn't like us to spend m-hours a day smiling at our bad jokes and manners?

Not heavy industry, but here is a video of an automated grocery warehouse: ▶ this video If you stick with the human first design, you miss out on enormous potential efficiency gains.

For shopping, surely the best robotic option are the various things the huge warehouses use, rather than havingthan a humanoid going around a store meant for humans? Both the things that look like Roombas and all these: ▶ this video No single consumer would buy all that, but the retailers can.

There are robot grocery warehouses in England: ▶ this video (5 minutes, Tom Scott video). Lots of Amazon's stock would be easier, but Amazon also has a greater range of sizes.

Not quite on-topic, but I have to wonder: why go and develop these long-winded solutions when we can come up with obvious better ones? -- order on your phone (which is nice and easy because you can add to your grocery list with a smart home speaker/smartphone list throughout the day) and then it's automatically packaged (in an automated warehouse: ▶ this video ) and delivered? And for folks who drive to work, have them shipped to their place of work. Places of work make accommodations like have parking for electric cars and cafeterias -- having a place for delivery storage strikes me as an obvious perk that has tremendous benefits both for employers, employees, and the environment.

Or maybe just do both. I do most of my groceries through Ocado, and their warehouse operations are almost fully automated[0], but then on the delivery front I can only assume they staff much more generously than amazon, because their delivery drivers are always much more relaxed than Amazon drivers, they're quite happy to have a chat while unpacking, and often call saying they're running early and ask whether it's ok to arrive before the delivery window. 0. ▶ this video

These days I try to avoid physical shops as much as possible. Here in the UK, we have a "supermarket" called Ocado. If you haven't heard of them, please look them up on Youtube[0]. They don't have any physical shops I know of, but have recently started stocking M&S products. They are known in the UK to usually be more expensive, but good quality. It might be the Whole Foods of the UK. They run warehouses with a grid of rails and seem to be on a mission to automate as much of the logistics and delivery of products as possible. The website allows me to set up a regular weekly order, I can edit it up until the evening of the day before to add any last minute items. I think I pay £10 a month for unlimited deliveries over £40. Having someone bring a weekly food shop to your door for £2.50 is a great deal. Not only is this a super easy to get food shopping done each week, I can do it from the comfort of my desk (great for when Retros get a little boring!). It also stops me impulse buying things. I know I already have a December 23rd order coming full of Christmas food and I get to avoid the packed Christmas food shoppers and the depressing Christmas decorations and music in store (I'm a scrooge). I don't want a better shopping experience, I want the best food, at the cheapest prices, delivered to me in a reliable way. I don't want to think about buying food any longer than I have to each week. [0] ▶ this video

>rethinking the whole process instead yields a much bigger boost. Reminds me of a Tom Scott video where he checks out the Ocado warehouse in the UK: ▶ this video It's crazy; they've rethought the entire system to have it navigable by machine.