By Eamonn Ryan
Warehouse automation is accelerating, with artificial intelligence and robotics set to change how goods are stored, picked and moved. But what will this mean for the future of logistics?
Supplied by SAPICS
The global economy is entering what some analysts describe as an unprecedented period of technological change, with artificial intelligence, robotics, new energy technologies, quantum computing and other disruptive technologies expected to reshape industries and workplaces.
Warehousing and logistics are likely to be among the sectors most affected. The rise of robots in warehouses was examined in a thought-provoking presentation by logistics specialist Martin Bailey at the 2026 SAPICS Conference in Cape Town (which has been previously covered in Cold Link Africa). The annual event, now in its 49th year, is Africa’s premier learning, knowledge-sharing and networking gathering for the supply-chain profession, attracting around 600 delegates this year.
Bailey traced the development of warehouse automation back to the 1960s, when automated systems began allowing facilities to become smaller while operating around the clock with fewer workers.
The 1970s saw the introduction of pallet automated guided vehicles (AGVs), designed to perform tasks traditionally undertaken by forklift operators. These had limited success in South Africa, but the technology has evolved considerably since then.
Today, warehouses can deploy autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), robotic arms and automated systems for sorting, storage, picking, packing, driving and palletising.
The next phase could be considerably more disruptive. Bailey believes the rise of robots in warehouses will happen faster than many expect because the potential benefits are substantial. Artificial intelligence could allow robots not merely to repeat programmed tasks, but to learn and adapt to increasingly complex activities.
He illustrated the potential impact by comparing human training with machine learning. “If a human worker wants to learn how to master a complex logistics sorting task, it takes weeks of training. If you have a one million humanoid robots, only one robot needs to figure out the task perfectly once. Within a millisecond, the remaining 999 999 robots instantly possess that exact same master-level skill.”
That possibility fundamentally changes the economics of automation. Traditional warehouse automation has generally been designed around specific tasks. A machine might move a pallet, sort a parcel or place a product into a particular location.
Increasingly capable robots, combined with AI, could perform a much wider range of activities and adapt to changing conditions. Humanoid robots are taking this concept further. Advanced machines are being developed with sophisticated vision, artificial intelligence and increasingly capable dexterity, allowing them to interact with environments originally designed for people.
The scale of global investment demonstrates the direction in which the technology is moving. Amazon Robotics, for example, reports that it has developed, produced and deployed more than 750 000 robots since the business was founded in 2012.
The wider economic forecasts are equally ambitious. ARK Invest has identified AI, robotics and other technologies as part of a potentially transformational wave of innovation, while forecasts from financial services groups such as Morgan Stanley point to a substantial expansion in the number of humanoid robots over the coming decades.
Whether those forecasts prove accurate remains to be seen. What is already clear is that robotics is moving beyond the experimental stage.
For logistics operators, the important question is therefore no longer whether robots will enter warehouses. They already have. The question is how quickly their capabilities will develop, which tasks they will take over, and what the implications will be for the people and businesses operating the warehouses.
And that question becomes particularly interesting in South Africa, where the economics of automation are complicated by high unemployment and a very different labour environment from the highly automated economies of Asia.
Part 2 will examine the South African warehouse environment and what the rise of robotics could mean for labour, investment and the cold chain.