​Ocado invests £10m in Wayve to drive autonomous delivery innovation

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Ocado has unveiled a partnership and £10m investment into autonomous mobility start-up Wayve, which will focus on bringing automation to the last mile for the etailer and its international grocery partners.

The online grocer will work with Wayve to “accelerate the development of autonomous grocery deliveries for complex urban environments”.

Wayze’s technology uses deep learning and camera-first technology to adapt to new and complex environments “without the need for pre-programming, human-designed rules, or high definition mapping.”

Wayve’s technology will be fitted to a selection of Ocado’s delivery vans and trialled on urban delivery routes for the next 12 months.

This will enable Ocado to see how the technology responds to congested streets and other challenges associated with last-mile delivery.

Ocado’s investment comes after Wilko recently announced plans to trial autonomous delivery for its shoppers by the end of next year through a partnership with StreetDrone.

Ocado chief of advanced technology Alex Harvey said: “Ocado is on a journey to develop highly intelligent autonomous mobility systems to further transform the operational economics, and proposition, of the Ocado Smart Platform for our OSP retail partners. We’ve been impressed with Wayve’s approach to solving this most complex of challenges and are excited to accelerate our capabilities so that our retail partners globally can take advantage of them at the earliest opportunity.

Wayve chief executive Alex Kendall added: “Globally, there is huge momentum to transform mobility in grocery operations right now. We are focused on delivering an autonomous last-mile solution to support the needs of grocery retailers everywhere. Through this partnership with Ocado Group, we aim to unlock autonomous delivery faster in more places worldwide.”