The Chinese robot army transforming the UK's retail industry
UK retailers are increasingly adopting autonomous mobile robots from the Chinese company Geek+ to improve warehouse efficiency and productivity. Experts suggest this shift is vital for the UK to overcome long-standing productivity challenges.
Why it matters
It demonstrates the growing role of automation in global supply chains and the UK's strategic pivot toward robotics to boost economic performance.
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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