Instacart has recently announced that it was aiming to automate parts of its grocery delivery business.

Indeed, the company is looking to build automated fulfillment centers around the US, where hundreds of robots would do tasks such as fetch boxes while humans gather produce and deli products. It plans on having some centers next to grocery stores and others that would be ‘standalone’ operations.

In order to do so, Instacart would be partnering with a supermarket chain to handle inventory, take care of the automation side, as well as process orders and deliveries. This would then help automate significant portions of the company’s workforce.

However, the company has been working on these automation plans for over a year and hasn’t yet signed up a single supermarket chain. It has also fallen behind schedule in developing its fulfillment centers. Automating its business would be a way for the company to ease some of the pressure on its workforce and lower costs, but using robots in the grocery delivery business requires huge investment and time…

Instacart’s future in automation is yet to be seen.