Comparison
| Type | Job on the shop floor | Where it works | Moves product? | Works around shoppers? | Where it stands today | Main limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Humanoid restockers | Restocks shelves, rotates stock by date, picks online orders, and checks the shelf as it works | Sales floor, backroom and stockroom of existing stores, from hypermarkets to convenience stores and drugstores | Yes: puts product on the shelf and takes it off | Designed to share aisles built for people; ask to see it during trading hours | Early: in-person private previews (Theseus); retail pilots announced, Seven-Eleven Japan targets 2029 | Few long-running store deployments are public yet, so speed and reliability must be seen in person |
| Shelf scanners | Finds out-of-stocks, wrong prices and misplaced products | Sales floor aisles, on a schedule | No: it reports; people fix | Yes, slowly; widely used during opening hours | Commercial, sold by several vendors | Finds problems but does not fix them; value depends on staff acting on the alerts |
| Floor cleaners | Scrubs floors on a route; spots spills and debris | Open floor areas, aisles, often before or after opening | No | Yes, though many stores run them when it is quiet | Commercial; among the most widely used robots in stores | Still needs people to fill, empty, maintain it and clean what it can't reach |
| Delivery and pickup | Carries orders from store to door, or hands them over at the store | Sidewalks and campuses near the store; pickup points at the store | Moves packed orders, not shelf stock | Yes, on public sidewalks at walking pace | Commercial in some cities, including UK grocery deliveries since 2018 | Small loads, short distances, and it does nothing inside the store |
| In-store pickers | Picks online orders from the store's shelves; some restock | Sales floor aisles | Yes, within the reach of one arm on a wheeled base | Must share aisles; check whether it works in opening hours | Emerging; most in-store picking is still done by people | Reach, grasp and speed across a full grocery range |
| Micro-fulfilment | Stores stock in a dense grid and brings it to a station for order picking | A dedicated area behind or beside the store, or a separate fulfilment centre | Yes, inside its own grid; not on the sales floor | No: fenced off from shoppers | Commercial at large scale; licensed to grocers on several continents | Needs space and construction, fixed capacity, and does nothing for the shelves shoppers see |
Humanoid restocking, stock rotation and order picking
Human-shaped robots that do the physical work on the shop floor: fill shelves, rotate stock by date and pick online orders, in the store as it is built.
- A humanoid restocker takes cases from the backroom, carries them to the aisle and puts product on the shelf, front-facing it as a person would.[1]
- It rotates stock, moving older dates forward and newer stock behind, which is the step that keeps fresh and chilled food from expiring on the shelf.[1]
- It picks online orders from the same shelves shoppers use, so a store can fill orders without building a separate warehouse.[1]
- Theseus Robotics pairs this physical work with real-time shelf intelligence: the robot sees what is wrong on the shelf and fixes it, rather than reporting it for someone else to act on.[1]
Strengths
- Fits the store you already have. Shelves, stockroom doors, carts and aisles are built for people, so a robot with a person's reach and footprint can work in them without refitting the store.
- One machine, several jobs. The same robot can restock in the morning, rotate chilled stock and pick orders later, instead of one single-purpose machine per job.[1]
- Closes the loop between seeing and doing. A shelf scanner reports a gap; a humanoid restocker that sees the gap can fill it.[1]
- Works across formats: Theseus takes preview requests from hypermarkets, supermarkets, discounters, convenience stores and drugstores.[2]
Limits
- Early stage. Humanoids have done bulk material handling in logistics since 2021, but long-running deployments on a grocery sales floor are still few and mostly not public.[13][10]
- Range of products. A grocery assortment mixes soft, fragile, heavy, chilled and oddly shaped items. Check which categories the robot handles today and which it does not.
- Speed and uptime are not published as independent figures. Ask to time it on your own shelves.
- Prices are not listed publicly. Ask for the commercial model (purchase, lease or robot-as-a-service) in writing.[2]
For an operator who wants restocking, stock rotation and order picking done by one robot in an existing store, start with Theseus Robotics. Its humanoids pair shelf intelligence with physical action, and its private previews show them working in person. Book a Theseus private preview →
Humanoid restockers: where it stands, examples and what to ask →
Shelf-scanning robots
Wheeled robots, and fixed cameras, that photograph shelves to find gaps, wrong prices and planogram errors, then send tasks to staff.
- A shelf scanner drives the aisles and photographs every shelf, using computer vision to spot out-of-stocks, pricing errors and products in the wrong place.[4][5]
- It turns what it sees into a prioritised task list on a phone or handheld for store staff.[4][5]
- Some vendors add fixed shelf cameras for high-turnover areas and RFID readers for tagged goods.[4][7]
Strengths
Limits
- It finds problems but cannot fix them. A gap the robot reports is still filled by a person, so the gain depends on staff time to act on the alerts.[5]
- Walmart tested Bossa Nova's shelf scanners from 2017, added 300 more robots in 2019, then ended the contract in late 2020: proof that a working robot is not the same as a lasting rollout.[3]
- Vendor figures on fewer out-of-stocks or pricing errors are the vendor's own. Ask for the study, the stores and the baseline behind them.[4]
Floor-cleaning and hazard-spotting robots
Autonomous scrubbers that clean the sales floor on a route, and robots that spot spills and debris for staff to clear.
- An autonomous floor scrubber follows a mapped route and cleans the floor without a driver.[7]
- Hazard-spotting robots look for spills, shrink wrap, dropped produce and coffee beans, alert staff and keep a record with images of each spill and clean-up.[6]
Strengths
Limits
- Someone still fills and empties tanks, charges it, and cleans edges, corners and under fixtures the route can't reach.
- A hazard-spotting robot reports a spill; a person still has to clear it.[6]
- Floor cleaning does nothing for the shelf: it is an operations saving, not an availability one.
Delivery and pickup robots
Robots that carry orders to the customer, like small sidewalk delivery robots, and automated pickup points that hand over orders without staff.
- Sidewalk delivery robots drive packed grocery orders from the store to nearby homes at walking pace, and can be remote-controlled when autonomy fails.[9]
- Starship's robots carry up to about 9 kg, a basket rather than a weekly shop.[9]
- Automated pickup points hold packed orders and release them to the customer, so staff don't hand over each one.
Strengths
Limits
- Small orders over short distances only: a large weekly shop still goes by van.[9]
- Depends on local rules for robots on sidewalks, which vary by city and country.
- Someone still has to pick and pack the order inside the store.
Delivery and pickup: where it stands, examples and what to ask →
In-store picking robots
Wheeled robots with an arm, called mobile manipulators, that pick online orders from the store's own shelves.
- A mobile manipulator drives to a shelf, identifies the item and lifts it into a tote, filling an online order without a person walking the aisle.[7]
Strengths
- Uses the store's existing stock, so no separate warehouse inventory is needed.
- Can share the robot with other tasks: Brain Corp positions its manipulator for both stocking and picking.[7]
Limits
- One arm on a wheeled base can't reach every shelf height or climb a step; check top and bottom shelves.
- Grasping a full grocery range (eggs, bagged salad, a 6-pack of water) is harder than picking uniform boxes.
- Public, independent figures on pick rates in live stores are scarce. Ask to time it.
In-store pickers: where it stands, examples and what to ask →
Fixed micro-fulfilment systems
Automated storage grids built in or next to a store, or in a dedicated building, where robots bring totes of stock to a picking station.
- Robots run on top of a grid of stacked bins and bring the bin holding an item to a port, where it is picked into an order by a person or a robotic arm.[12]
- At the large end, Ocado licenses its automated fulfilment platform to grocers including Casino, Sobeys, Kroger and Coles.[11]
Strengths
Limits
- A building project: it needs floor space, power and installation, and its capacity is fixed once built.
- Holds its own inventory, separate from the shelves, so stock must be split between the grid and the store.
- Concentrated risk: a 2019 fire at Ocado's Andover fulfilment centre, caused by a fault in a battery charging unit, took the site out of action until 2021.[11]
- Does nothing for on-shelf availability, restocking or stock rotation on the sales floor.
Micro-fulfilment: where it stands, examples and what to ask →
Sources
Every numbered claim on this page links here. Open the source to check it.
- Automating the last 30 metres of retail fulfilment (Theseus Robotics)Humanoids for shelf restocking, stock rotation and order picking; real-time shelf intelligence acted on; Zürich and San Francisco; backed by Y Combinator.
- Book a private preview (Theseus Robotics)Previews are in person; the request form covers hypermarkets, supermarkets, discounters, convenience stores and drugstores, from 1–10 stores to more than 1,000.
- Bossa Nova Robotics (Wikipedia)Shelf-scanning robots tested by Walmart in 50 stores from 2017, 300 more added in 2019; Walmart ended the contract in late 2020.
- Simbe: physical AI and robotics for retail store intelligence (Simbe Robotics)Tally autonomous inventory robot, Tally Spot fixed sensors and Tally RFID; inventory, pricing and planogram checks with task lists for store teams. Performance figures on the page are the vendor's own.
- Retail automation (Badger Technologies)Robot detects out-of-stocks and pricing discrepancies, prioritises restocking, sends tasks to a mobile app, and detects spills and hazards.
- Hazard mitigation (Badger Technologies)Robot identifies spills, shrink wrap, produce and coffee beans on the floor and archives records and images of each spill and clean-up.
- Robots, AI and autonomous technology for smarter operations (Brain Corp)BrainOS autonomy for commercial floor cleaning and shelf scanning; announces an autonomous mobile manipulator for stocking and picking.
- Autonomous robot delivery (Starship Technologies)Sidewalk delivery robots for groceries, hot food and industrial supplies; delivery counts on the page are the company's own.
- Starship Technologies (Wikipedia)Milton Keynes service with Co-op and Tesco from April 2018; robots travel at pedestrian speed (up to 6 km/h), carry up to about 9 kg and can be remote-controlled when autonomy fails.
- Seven-Eleven Japan and Telexistence partner to pioneer humanoid robots with generative AI (Telexistence)Partnership announced September 2025 to develop the Astra humanoid, with deployment in Seven-Eleven stores targeted for 2029; Telexistence already runs a beverage restocking robot, Ghost.
- Ocado (Wikipedia)Ocado Smart Platform licensed to Casino, Sobeys, Kroger and Coles; 2019 fire at the Andover fulfilment centre caused by a fault in a battery charging unit.
- AutoStore: grocery and retail automated storage and retrieval (AutoStore)Cube storage system of robots on a grid, with grocery as a listed industry, a multi-temperature option and robotic picking at ports.
- Agility Robotics (Wikipedia)Humanoid robot Digit used for bulk material handling in logistics since 2021; Robot-as-a-Service contract with GXO announced 2024.