Warehouse robots are gaining a lot of popularity and its rising importance due to its usage in varied number of applications such as food and beverage, automotive, pharmaceuticals, electronics, construction, defense, oil and gas. Companies are investing huge in research and development activities in the warehouse robotics market, especially developed countries for product innovation and also to automate it in a more advanced way. With rapid advancement in technology and increasing demand of warehouse robotics to improve product quality, production and space utilization, the market for warehouse robotics market is growing at a positive rate globally.
In December 2014, Amazon installed almost 15,000 robots in its US warehouse to cut operation cost by one-fifth and to meet up the increasing consumer demand during festive seasons. They also wanted to compete with the brick and mortar stores and to deliver items to customers on time and at a faster rate. The technology was developed by Kiva Systems, a robotics company. Recently, Amazon announced that it would renamed Kiva systems to Amazon Robotics and also hire a head of Robotics.
Increased demand of automation, time saving and reduction in cost, increasing number of stock keeping units, increasing demand and awareness towards quality and safety production, advancement in technology, increased use in various applications and industries such as food and beverage, electronics, are the important market drivers for the warehouse robotics market.
Initial high adoption cost related to training, deployment, lack of awareness and difficulty in interacting with robots for some end users are some of the barriers which is hampering the growth of warehouse robotics market.