Royal Mail hopes robots can deliver the goods at vast new super-hub

A group of engineers in hi-vis jackets stand around a cage, studying the giant white robot in front of them. An alarm sounds and the robot whirrs into life. It picks up a big red bin of parcels and tips them onto a conveyor belt, where they are whipped off along a series of yellow gantries. The engineers nod to themselves, satisfied. The robot, one of six giant mechanical arms in this squeaky-clean warehouse, has passed the test and is ready for its debut.

The machine is just one cog in Royal Mail’s vast new Midlands super-hub, a parcel sorting centre on steroids. The giant metal shed, a stone’s throw from the M1 motorway in Nottinghamshire, is half a kilometre long. When it turns on