The Chinese robot army transforming the UK's retail industry
Chinese robotics firm Geek+ is expanding its footprint in the UK retail sector, providing autonomous mobile robots to major retailers like Tesco and Asda. The adoption of this technology is seen as a potential solution to the UK's long-standing productivity challenges.
Why it matters
The integration of foreign robotics into national supply chains highlights the global shift toward warehouse automation to improve economic efficiency.
Image source, Geek+ Image caption, Two thousand Geek+ robots are deployed across 10 sites in the UK
Every time you click "buy" on an online order, the chances are that your purchase starts getting processed within minutes.
Increasingly, the journey starts with a squat silver floor robot gliding beneath a storage rack, lifting a shelf and carrying it across a warehouse to a waiting worker.
At Geek+'s factory in the eastern Chinese city of Hefei, which the BBC visited, fleets of the robots are built and tested before being shipped to warehouses around the world.
Some of Britain's biggest retailers - including Tesco, Asda and Next - now use the company's technology.
By automating these repetitive journeys, Geek+ says retailers can increase picking speeds, store more goods in spaces that are hard to reach for humans, and reduce errors.
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