Wilko invest £3 million in robotic delivery service

Wilko is amongst the first of our high street stores to have invested in a robotics company for future and cheaper deliveries.

- High street retailer Wilko invests £3 million in robotic delivery company.

- StreetDrone have invented sustainable and safe robots to deliver parcels.

- StreetDrone promises “Safer environments, better reliability, reduced congestion and lower costs.”

Delivery Robots: Photo by Kindel Media from Pexels

Wilko are a family ran business who arrived on our high streets in 1930, firstly in Leicester, and have become a household name for many. Last year they made a £2.1 billion turnover from over 200,000 products they sell in store and online, with 14,000 of those being own branded produce.

In a statement, Wilko announced: “The investment forms a core element of Wilko’s long-term strategy to strengthen its omnichannel (different methods of shopping) model, in line with the ever-changing customer behaviours that have been accelerated during the pandemic."

StreetDrone on the other hand, were founded in 2017 and are an upcoming company in the technology business, who specialise in autonomous vehicles for future home deliveries.

They have unveiled their ‘Pix-E’ model of unmanned car, which is fully electric and is set to change the way we see our highstreets forever. With an 80km run time with 8 locked compartments for parcels, the 'Pix-E' can run at safe speeds in residential neighbourhoods.

Jonathan Griffin, Director of WilkinsonFuture, (Department for investments in innovative, cutting-edge sectors for Wilko) said: “We were very excited when we met StreetDrone and would have happily added them directly to our portfolio of young businesses. However, it is even better that Wilko shared that view and I look forward to supporting them and seeing both businesses, one new and one over 90 years young, flourishing together.”

Shaoshan Liu, a Harvard scholar in Autonomous Driving, wrote in his ‘Creating Autonomous Vehicle Systems’: “Based on our experiences, most commercially available systems provide a localization accuracy no better than a 2-m radius. Based on our experiences, most commercially available (satellite) systems provide a localization accuracy no better than a 2-m radius.” Although this addresses concerns of accuracy, Liu does explain that “Fortunately (modern systems do) provide decimetre level localization accuracy.”

Hayley Dunford, 28, Birmingham is a store assistant in Wilko Selly Oak, has been with the company for 10 years, and thinks the high streets we know will “vanish if a big investment will replace jobs from staff to robots.

“Obviously for the customer, they won’t have to go out of the house for household goods. But you can’t count on robots to get it right all the time. I think there might be more cons to consider.

“Customers want friendly service, help if needed by staff. Even though our self-scan tills are programmed to run on their own, they still need guidance, and some customers prefer to get served by staff.”

Despite concerns of autonomous cars taking jobs off retail staff, as more new autonomous car companies develop, there will be a surplus of jobs in warehouses and technical engineers. The impact that a sustainable and potentially cheaper delivery service will have on the environment will have an unprecedented reduction in both emissions and congestion.