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Introduction
The recent and dramatic growth of e-commerce has catalysed the use of automation in large warehouses. Although automated guided vehicles have been available since the 1950s and originally followed defined paths, with later generations in the 1990s using laser guidance systems, most aspects of order fulfilment have traditionally been conducted by human operators. Fully autonomous mobile robots aimed at automating various warehouse operations were developed in 2006 and marked the emergence of a significant new market sector. Subsequent years have seen rapid market growth, technological innovation, numerous product developments and new applications. These are discussed in this article.
Commercial background and motivations for market growth
Since being founded in 2003, Kiva systems have remained the sole supplier of mobile robots to the e-commerce sector for several years. In 2012, Amazon acquired Kiva for $775m, renaming it Amazon Robotics and withdrawing the products from the open market. This had two significant consequences: a community of new robot manufacturers emerged to fill the gap in the market (Table 1) and the realisation by the major e-commerce companies that robotic automation would be required to maintain competitiveness. These factors arguably catalysed the robotic warehouse automation market, which has grown from a global value of around $2bn in 2016 to reach approximately $6bn in 2022 and is forecast to rise to $7.6bn by 2026. Amazon now has over 200,000 robots operating in its warehouses, far more than any other e-commerce company. Figure 1 shows an early Kiva mobile robot transporting products at an Amazon facility; the Robo-Stow, a heavy-duty robot used to move pallets containing large quantities of products, based on a Fanuc M-2000iA series unit, is shown in Figure 2; and Figure 3 shows a replacement of the Kiva robot being manufactured by Amazon Robotics.
The Covid pandemic has exerted a major impact on the e-commerce sector: a dramatic growth in online business and a shortage of available workers. While global online sales grew by 24% between 2019 and 2020, reaching a value of around $4.2tn, the illness-related worker shortage made orders difficult to fulfil. Despite the health impact of the pandemic having now fallen significantly in many industrialised nations, several countries continue to suffer from worker shortages which have accelerated the e-commerce sector’s investment in automation....