GXO Logistics Deploys Humanoid Robots
GXO Logistics, the world's largest pure-play contract logistics provider, is now piloting humanoid robotics in its live warehouse operations. The company's integration of advanced robots, which recently earned it a prestigious supply chain award, signals a shift from trial phases to scaled, business-critical deployments in the logistics sector.
- GXO is concurrently piloting humanoid robots from at least three different vendors: Apptronik (the Apollo robot), Agility Robotics (the Digit robot), and Reflex Robotics, to evaluate various hardware and AI platforms. - The partnership with Apptronik is an early-stage proof-of-concept focusing on lab-based AI model tuning before deployment. Their Apollo robot stands 5'8", weighs 160 lbs, and is designed to carry 55 lbs, with a 4-hour swappable battery. - The collaboration with Agility Robotics is more mature, involving a multi-year Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) agreement for their Digit robot. This humanoid is already in commercial operation at a GXO-managed SPANX facility, where its tasks include moving totes from Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) to conveyors. - Agility Robotics' Digit stands 5'9" tall, weighs 140 pounds, and can lift up to 35 pounds. It navigates using LiDAR and multiple depth cameras, and is managed by Agility Arc, a cloud-based fleet management platform. - The pilot with Reflex Robotics involves a humanoid designed to become fully autonomous by learning from human demonstrations and can be operationally capable within an hour of deployment. GXO is co-developing use cases for it in an omni-channel fulfillment center for a Fortune 100 retailer. - This humanoid initiative is part of a broader automation strategy that saw GXO increase its total units of warehouse automation by approximately 50% in 2023. - GXO's Chief Automation Officer, Adrian Stoch, views the company's warehouses as "operational incubators" or "living labs" where robotics developers can test and refine their technology in real-world environments. - To manage these complex, automated environments, GXO recently launched GXO IQ, a proprietary AI-powered platform built on Google Cloud's Vertex AI to orchestrate operations across inventory, robotics, and personnel in real-time.
