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The Guardian - UK

Technology

Heather Stewart

Rise of the robots raises a big question: what will workers do?

Robots Avery Andrew Fox Kate Bell Neil Carberry TUC

A man carrying a laptop on a bare warehouse floor moves among several orange and blue robots, about waist high, with flat tops — A ‘robot whisperer’ walks among the ‘ants’ at Active Ants’ e-fulfilment centre in Northampton. Photograph: Andrew Fox/The Observer

With a low electrical hum, a small team of boxy, wheeled robots called “ants” criss-cross the top of a giant 3D grid of grey storage crates – 60,000 of them - ceaselessly arranging and rearranging them to order.

Down on the warehouse floor, flat-topped “ranger” robots ferry cardboard packing boxes around. Just one man, jokingly known as the robot whisperer, walks among them with a laptop.

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