Beyond the shelves of the world’s leading supermarkets and department stores, one Chinese company has led the way in automating their warehouses with smart, fast-moving robots. In countries where workers are increasingly unwilling to work in heavy lifting jobs, Beijing Geekplus Technology has filled the void with autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) to move goods and sort inventories.

LOGISTICS LOGIC

Tsinghua University graduate Zheng Yong founded Geekplus in 2015 after stints working at European technology and manufacturing companies ABB Group and Saint-Gobain. Zheng noticed that the level of automation in logistics had lagged behind that on factory production lines, creating an opportunity for his startup. Today, Zheng remains Geekplus’s chief executive with a 7.3 percent stake in the company through two limited partnerships in Tianjin, according to Wirescreen.

The AMRs Geekplus has developed can navigate environments like warehouses without fixed tracks, using cameras, sensors and mapping software for direction and to detect obstacles. They can also automatically return to charging stations in order to keep running 24 hours a day. 

“Labor is always the primary concern for warehouse operators,” says Fox Chen, research analyst at market research firm ARC Advisory Group. “There has always been a shortage of labour and it has been increasingly difficult to fill the roles for various industries while achieving high productivity and stay competitive. That’s one of the main reasons as to why [there’s a move] towards the adoption of warehouse automation solutions such as AMRs.”

Geekplus’ philosophy is to improve warehouse productivity by changing the “person looks for goods” formula into “goods-to-person.” In traditional warehouses, employees spend up to 70 percent of their time walking to find goods, the company says.

One of Geekplus’ first customers was Alibaba-owned e-commerce platform Tmall, which used 50 Geekplus robots to automate its 3,000 square-meter warehouse in Tianjin. Fortune magazine listed Zheng in its 40 Chinese Business Elites under-40 in 2018, and in 2020 the company opened its first U.S. office in San Diego. 

Today, Geekplus is the world’s number one supplier of AMRs, according to market intelligence firm Interact Analysis, which predicts that such robots could account for 30 percent of total warehouse automation revenues globally by 2027, equating to around $14 billion annually.

Geekplus’s domestic competitors include Shenzhen-based Standard Robots and state-owned Hikvision’s robotics subsidiary Hikrobot, while internationally, it faces competition from German automation equipment company KION Group and the U.S.’s Amazon, which unveiled its first AMR in 2022.

Geekplus’ ‘Shelf-to-Person’ robots at working in a UPS Supply Chain Solutions warehouse. Credit: Geek+

ROBOT RACE

China overtook the U.S. in robot density for the first time in 2021, when it recorded 322 robots for every 10,000 employees, according to the International Federation of Robotics. Today, the country ranks fifth in the world in terms of robot density, and is the fastest growing robot market globally. In January 2023, the Chinese government included logistics in a list of ten priority industries for robotics advancement under its Robot + Application Action Plan.

In China, domestic companies have been leading the way in warehouse automation, responding to ever higher demand for mobile robots.

In October 2023, Geekplus unveiled a 12-meter high mobile robot, which the company claims is the industry’s tallest. The robot, called the RoboShuttle, is designed to work together with a smaller model to collect goods from tall shelves and deliver them to a human workstation. The company’s robots had moved five million containers in 170 warehouses using this method by May 2024, according to a company press release.

Geekplus’ RoboShuttle in action. Credit: Geek+

Check out the graphic below for more details on some of Geekplus’ most well-known customers.

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