UK online retailer Ocado is investing £10m in mobility start-up Wayve to accelerate the development of autonomous grocery deliveries for complex urban environments.

Wayve’s deep learning and camera-first technology has the ability to adapt to new, unstructured, highly complex environments, without the need for pre-programming, human-designed rules or high-definition mapping.

The collaboration includes an autonomous delivery trial that will see Wayve’s technology fitted onto a selection of Ocado delivery vans and tested on urban delivery routes. This trial will help Ocado explore first-hand how Wayve can handle the congested streets and challenging manoeuvres that last-kilometre delivery technology must be equipped to navigate. A portion of Ocado’s existing delivery fleet will also be outfitted with Wayve’s data collection devices to provide data for training and validating Wayve’s technology.

“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,” said Alex Harvey, chief of advanced technology at Ocado. “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.”

Alex Kendall, CEO of Wayve, added: “Ocado Group has been driving innovation in global grocery logistics for decades. Their cutting-edge approach to grocery operations and international reach aligns strongly with Wayve’s culture and global ambitions. I am incredibly excited to collaborate with Ocado Group and learn from their vast expertise. 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.”

Wayve says it was the first to deploy autonomous vehicles on public roads with end-to-end deep learning. It is pioneering an AI software, lean hardware and fleet learning platform for autonomous driving system that can quickly and safely adapt to new driving domains anywhere in the world.

Founded in 2017, Wayve is made up of a team of experts in machine learning and robotics from top organisations around the world. It has raised over $58m and is backed by Eclipse Ventures, Balderton Capital and prominent technology leaders such as Sir Richard Branson, Rosemary Leith and Yann LeCun. The team is headquartered in London with its fleet of vehicles testing in cities across the UK. Wayve aims to be the first to deploy autonomy in 100 cities.

Ocado Group is a UK based technology company trading on the London Stock Exchange. It provides end-to-end online grocery fulfilment to some of the world’s largest grocery retailers and holds a 50% share of Ocado Retail in the UK in a joint venture with Marks & Spencer. Ocado has spent two decades innovating for grocery online, investing in a wide technology estate that includes robotics, AI, machine learning, simulation, forecasting and edge intelligence.