Warehouse robot market boosted by Covid pandemic and technological innovations

Purpose This paper aims to provide details of recent commercial and technological developments that are driving robotic warehouse automation. Design/methodology/approach Following a short introduction, this first provides a commercial background and identifies the factors driving the market growth. It then gives examples of robotics companies, products and applications that exploit innovations in artificial intelligence (AI). It then considers future prospects, and finally, brief conclusions are drawn. Findings Amazon’s acquisition of Kiva led to a community of new robot manufacturers and the realisation by major e-commerce companies that robotic automation would be required to maintain competitiveness. The Covid pandemic caused a surge in e-commerce and a critical shortage of labour, which further highlighted the need for automation and boosted robotic deployments. Recent advances in AI have resulted in a rapidly growing community of companies producing AI-powered robots which offer advanced capabilities such as mixed product picking, sorting and kitting. These are being deployed by a growing number of e-commerce and logistics companies and are paving the way towards ever-higher levels of warehouse automation. Full automation will soon become a reality. Originality/value This paper identifies the factors driving the rapidly developing warehouse robot business by considering the companies, products, technology and applications.