In context
In September 2023, warehouse automation was accelerating as e-commerce and labor shortages pushed operators to seek productivity gains. Exotec, a French robotics company known for its Skypod goods-to-person system, released cumulative operational data highlighting the scale of its deployments and the physical burden robots remove from workers.
What was reported
Exotec reported that since its first site delivery in 2017, its warehouse robots have traveled a combined 28,791,005 kilometers (17,889,901 miles), equivalent to 37 round trips to the moon. The company's Skypod robots have logged over 5 million kilometers at the longest-running site, with an average of 1.75 million kilometers across its 10 busiest sites.
Globally, the robots have completed nearly 230 million cycles, where one cycle is defined as retrieving a bin, bringing it to a picking station, and returning it to storage. A single cycle can account for up to four orders. The company reached its first 100 million cycles in five years, then completed the second 100 million in just one year.
Since the first system was delivered to Cdiscount in 2017, Exotec's Skypod systems have accumulated 425,000 hours of usage time with more than 99 percent uptime, equivalent to nearly 18,000 days across 15 countries. Most sites outside Europe are in the United States and Japan, with the largest site featuring over 235,000 storage locations.
Why it mattered
The data underscored how goods-to-person robotics can significantly reduce worker fatigue and improve throughput in distribution centers. Exotec's rapid growth, from 100 million to 200 million cycles in one year, signaled strong market adoption and validated the business case for robotic picking systems in large-scale warehouse operations.
“Our rapid growth trajectory clearly reflects the broader trend towards enhancing safety and productivity in warehouse environments.”
Source: Robotics & Automation News (roboticsandautomationnews.com) · Published 2023-09-05 · “Exotec robots ‘save warehouse workers from walking nearly 30 million kilometres’”