Amazon: Dunstable robots pick early Christmas shopping for customers

Thousands of robots at a busy fulfilment centre, each capable of lifting the weight equivalent to a grand concert piano, are used to pick and move towering stacks of online shopping orders.

The 3,000 robots, at the Amazon site in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, work alongside a human workforce to pick orders from shelves for delivery to customers.

In the multi-storey warehouse the size of a football pitch, the robots pick the items within 20 minutes of an order being placed for it to then be packed and dispatched.

As Laura Foster reports, more than 2,500 people work at the centre with an additional 500 people being recruited in time for the festive season.