Today we speak with Product Coach Guy Walker, who is currently Director of Product - Robotics at Ocado Technologies. Ocado is a technology-led global software and robotics platform business based in the UK, providing a unique end-to-end solution for online grocery around the world. We learn how he got into leading a robotics team, how he upskilled for his role, and all sorts of interesting facts about the mechanics of robots and how Ocado goes about designing and building the right robotics solutions.

This article is a shortened form of a podcast episode Guy Walker recorded with Venturi’s Voice, a podcast hosted by tech recruiting firm Venturi.

How did you get into leading a Robotics team?

I was lucky enough to just fall into it! I have a background in both traditional software development and leading mechanical engineering teams as well as embedded software groups. My previous engineering director became the Chief of Advanced Technology and I asked if there was a way for me to get involved. Thankfully he said yes. But I'm a product person and a strategist, so all of this was really new to me at first. I had quite a lot to learn. Granted, I did build Lego Technic toys as a kid, so my interest in it runs quite deep. But this job is on a whole different level.

How did you go about learning Robotics in order to do your job?

First I'll say that there is an incredibly intelligent team of people around me that do all the hard work and I've learned so much from them. There are hundreds of books and white papers about robotics, so I've done my best to read the best ones. We also partner with a number of research labs at universities like MIT and University of Bristol through which I've been exposed to topics like simulation and dexterity in robots. Probably the most fun thing I did to learn was to build a robot myself. Ocado partners with a company called Haddington Dynamics. They can 3d print a robot, it's incredible! I got Haddington to ship me one of their robots in parts to my house. It took eight months of painstakingly late evenings to put it all together. Going through this exercise meant I finally understood the end-to-end of how you bring a 3d printed robot to life.

How does Ocado Technology use robotics?

Robotics has become a major part of Ocado Technology, with its acquisition of two organizations and the use of robotics in their warehouses. Robotics has not only transformed our business by taking away labour intensive jobs, but has also enabled us to train up staff to do more complex tasks. My favorite example of this is one our Robotics Maintenance and Teleoperation Specialists. He was 18 when he started working as a picker and it was his first job. He had no prior science or engineering training. He spent 12 months to upskill into his new role, learning the technology and working really closely with experts who were able to teach and mentor him. Now he does everything from designing & building hardware, all the way through to training robots using a VR headset. So despite the fact that robots are removing one potential job, they are providing such incredible opportunities in other areas. 

We have our own grocery fulfillment centers for Ocado.com, but we also power fulfillment centers for grocery clients all over the world, like Kroger's, Auchan, and ICA. Historically this has required a lot of human labour - picking and packing groceries is a very intense job. People doing this job are on their feet for eight hours a day moving heavy objects. And from a business perspective, the money is in economies of scale, so precision and speed are important. Robotics are a powerful answer in this environment because you can put robots in a human's place, take away those labor intensive jobs that people don't want to do, and retrain them to do things they do actually want to do. This is a game changer.

How do you train a robot to do what a human does?

It's really all about observation and building the behaviours that we observe in real life into the robot, it is in the data sets, and algorithms. I'll give you one example. When we as humans manipulate objects, we are controlling something called force. Force is a physical quantity that affects how things move. It is what causes an object to change it's direction or speed. Controlling force is a completely subconscious thing that we do without even being aware of it. Did you know that if we want to turn right on a bicycle, we actually turn left first? By shifting slightly left to put yourself off balance, you allow for that wider correction when you turn right. I actually tried this in real life. Without the counter-balance movement, I indeed fell off my daughter's bike!

So our teams spend a lot of time monitoring what people do, extracting what they're actually doing versus what they think they're doing, and then building that information into the robot's capabilities to the point where the robot understands what a person is doing better than they do.

But it's also about using human knowledge to optimize what a robot does as well. We have all these people who used to be responsible for picking groceries from different sections of the warehouse and putting them into the bags to be delivered to customers. We call them "pickers". So as we have replaced certain types of picking with robots, those pickers have been instrumental in helping us figure out how to do that best. As we put robots into test centers, the pickers are the ones who can tell us if a robot is overreaching and therefore being inefficient. They can say "This is how I would have done it," and demonstrate for us exactly how it could have been done better. Having access to their domain knowledge is integral to the way we approach building robotic solutions. So actually, because we have that experience as a grocer doing our own fulfillment, but also as a technology company providing solutions for clients, we have a unique advantage over other companies in the space when it comes to Robotics.

How do the mechanics of a robot work?

Imagine picking up an orange. As a human, you automatically twist your wrist to hold the orange in the palm of your hand to hold it securely. But for a robot, it's more challenging. Robots often use a claw-like grip to hold objects, which means they have to counter the force of gravity. The heavier the object, the more force the robot needs to grip it. However, applying too much force can damage delicate items like an orange. Robots can solve this problem by using techniques like gripping under the object(this is called Underactuation in robotics terms), which mechanically stabilizes it. By doing this, the robot can use less force and increase its efficiency. It's similar to how we automatically slide our fingers underneath an item we hold. This approach reduces the energy consumed and the force required. As we design our robots, we're constantly trying to optimize for the different size, weight, and delicateness of different items and finding ways to grip and move them using the right amount of force for each item.

What innovations can we expect to see in 2023 from Ocado?

I'm pretty sure there is an IP lawyer lurking around the corner to make sure I don't give away any trade secrets! But what I can say is that I'm most looking forward to seeing autonomous delivery come to life. We've partnered with Oxa and Wayve to solve this problem. Once we crack that, then the question of how do we get the shopping right into the customer's house or even cupboards for maximum convenience comes up. I'd love to solve that with some kind of spider robot. We will have to wait and see together!

What other industries can robotics technology be transferred to?

The possibilities are endless. I don't work for Ocado because I'm passionate about pomegranates. I work for Ocado because they really want to help their customers. And to do that, we push the boundaries of technology. This gives me the landscape to experiment in incredible ways with incredible things and do almost anything with them in the future. I firmly believe that as we are learning to be careful about picking up an orange so that we don't crush it, we are learning things that can change the world for the better. In the future, this kind of technology could be applied to so many important life-saving use cases.

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