Northumberland robotics firm Tharsus could soon ramp up its partnership with Ocado four years after first teaming up with the online grocery retailer.

The Blyth business, which designs and manufactures electro-mechanical systems, has been unveiled as the long-term partner in Ocados warehouse automation project, having already made swarm of robots for the firm which are used to pick groceries for delivery.

Now Ocado plans to introduce the robots at other sites, including their fourth grocery customer fulfilment centre (CFC) in Erith, South East London.

The two companies have been working closely together since 2013 when Tharsus first became the official co-designer and manufacturer of the robotic vehicle that now forms the foundation of the game-changing Ocado Smart Platform.

Ocado is the worlds largest dedicated online grocery retailer with more than 580,000 active customers in the UK and the revolutionary robot hive system built in partnership with Tharsus features huge numbers of robots, retrieving crates of groceries from beneath a grid structure.

The hive was recently deployed in Ocados Andover customer fulfilment centre (CFC) and is enabling the company to maximise the efficiency of food deliveries and significantly reduce customer order picking times from hours to a few minutes.

Tharsus worked in close collaboration with Ocado Technology and Ocado Engineering to rapidly prototype, develop and refine the robot for mass production.

Tharsus chief technical officer Dave Swan said: One of the greatest challenges has been the management of thousands of bots moving on one grid simultaneously, each carrying over 30 kg of groceries while moving at several metres per second with just millimetres between each machine.

The robots need to accelerate and decelerate rapidly and stop with millimetre accuracy.

They need to pick up and carry a heavy payload over long distances and be able to run for many hours on a single battery charge.

Nothing of this scale, sophistication or modularity existed before, so both companies had to innovate in several areas related to software and hardware design to make this system fully operational.

We knew that our vision for the Ocado Smart Platform was challenging from the outset stated Ocados Chief Operating Officer Mark Richardson We wanted to transform the way Ocado operates and also be able to offer the system to other global retailers to transform the way they serve their customers. The robot is one of the fundamental elements of our system and Tharsus has been a great partner to help us achieve our ambition. Theyve worked as a core member of our team, providing great technical insight into the design, with a flexible manufacturing operation to deliver machines to our site. Their support has been invaluable to us in getting our first fulfilment centre operational last year.

As part of Ocados plan to introduce the robots at other sites Tharsus now has the capacity to produce thousands of units per year.

Our collaboration with Ocado and strong relationship with our critical component suppliers has produced a great result of which were very proud, added Mr Swan.

The partnership has produced a world-class goods-handling robot in a very short space of time. As we ramp-up production and start joint design of the next generation robot, were looking forward to supporting Ocado fulfil its ambitions in the UK and abroad.

Accounts published by Tharsus in March showed a a 67% hike in turnover after bringing in over 20m last year.

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Robotics firm Tharsus provides horsepower for Ocado's new warehouse - ChronicleLive