Warehouses Become the First Battleground for Embodied Robot Deployment

Last year, discussions on embodied intelligence revolved around demo videos. This year, that's no longer enough, an industry insider said at WAIC 2026 — and the first sector to accept the challenge is logistics and warehousing, according to a Gasgoo report published Wednesday.

Proof in Production

In May, U.S.-based Figure livestreamed a 200-hour session in which its Figure 03 robot processed approximately 249,600 parcels at a conveyor belt — nearly 21 items per minute on average. In China, AgiBot partnered with JD.com to launch the safety-rated, heavy-load Elf G2 Max in mid-July and deploy it in JD Logistics' Smart Wolf warehouses, handling full-case palletizing and tote transfers. ROBOTERA, meanwhile, has reached normalized operations at more than a dozen logistics centers with SF Express and China Post, using its M7 half-body humanoid and XHAND1 dexterous hand to feed packages at up to 1,200 items per hour — over 85 percent of human efficiency.

Why Logistics First

The sector fits what JD Logistics' warehousing robotics head Liu Lige calls the three-highs-and-one-low standard: high frequency, high standardization, high quantifiability and low cost of failure, with transparent per-piece ROI. Geek+, which created an embodied-intelligence subsidiary last year, is moving its Gino 1 general-purpose warehouse robot into gradual mass production in the third quarter, and wheeled designs from Galbot, Fourier, Leju and MagicLab are targeting the same scenario.

Barriers remain: logistics operators demand a 99.99 percent task completion rate with autonomous error recovery, robots must integrate with existing warehouse management systems without costly overhauls, and the industry still lacks unified interface standards. But with JD.com incubating a full Wolf Tribe of robots spanning storage, transport, sorting and last-mile delivery, the pilot deployments of hundreds of units are now scaling toward thousands.