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Introduction
Recent years have seen a massive growth in e-commerce. It is the fastest-growing segment of the retail industry, and in 2012, e-commerce sales topped $1 trillion for the first time. In 2013, it still represented less than 10 per cent of the retail total but has been growing steadily at around 15 per cent per annum and is expected to continue at this rate for the remainder of the decade. It is predicted that, by 2017, e-commerce will account for 15 per cent of the British economy.
E-commerce fulfilment is essentially a piece-picking operation, and on-line retailers are having to change and update their warehousing and delivery operations to meet growing demand and customer expectations for a fast and efficient service. To date, the retrieval of e-commerce goods in warehouses has been very costly. According to the German Centre for Digital Technology and Management, having humans pick the items accounts for 55 per cent of logistics companies' warehousing costs. Various forms of automation have been used in warehouses for several years, but the demands of e-commerce are such that this is now an absolute prerequisite and robots are starting to play a vital role, a trend started by Amazon. According to recent market research, the global warehouse robotics market is forecast to reach $10.34bn by 2020, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 11.5 per cent during the period 2015 to 2020. This article aims to discuss the growing community of companies manufacturing warehouse robots, together with details of their products and applications.
The Amazon experience
Amazon was a pioneer in the use of robots in fulfilment centres. In 2011, it started by using 1,300 robots produced by Kiva Systems, a Boston-based robotics start-up founded by two former MIT graduates. In 2012, Amazon acquired Kiva for $775m and has since renamed it Amazon Robotics. It now has around 30,000 of these robots operating in 13 fulfilment centres, effectively doubling the number it had in 2014. They are used to move items located in large, heavy, portable storage units (Figure 1) and are powered by rechargeable lead-acid batteries. The lifting capacity is 750 pounds (341 kg), achieved through a ball-screw mechanism powered by a single DC motor. When an order is entered into the...