New robots—smarter and faster—are taking over warehouses

ADECADE AGO Amazon started to introduce robots into its “fulfilment centres”, as online retailers call their giant distribution warehouses. Instead of having people wandering up and down rows of shelves picking goods to complete orders, the machines would lift and then carry the shelves to the pickers. That saved time and money. Amazon’s sites now have more than 350,000 robots of various sorts deployed worldwide. But even that is not enough to secure its future.Advances in warehouse robotics, coupled with increasing labour costs and , have created a watershed moment in the logistics industry. With covid-19 lockdowns causing supply-chain disruptions and a boom in home deliveries that is likely to endure, fulfilment centres have been working at full tilt.