The retailer has linked with partners including agricultural robotics specialist Small Robot Company, which is working with partnership-owned grocer Waitrose & Partners on a trial of robot harvesting at the latter’s Leckford estate farm.

The project is designed to “foster and accelerate the safe and ethical adoption of robotics across British industry” at a time when the number of industrial robots active in the UK has risen by 30%, prompting fears about a nightmarish future for humans of unemployment and technological dictatorship.