DHL surpasses 500M picks with Locus Robotics’ AMRs

A fleet of Locus autonomous mobile robots at a DHL warehouse.
DHL recently surpassed 500 million picks with Locus Robotics’ AMRs. | Credit: Locus Robotics

Locus Robotics continues to rack up the milestones with its autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for warehouse fulfillment. The company today said its LocusBot AMRs have surpassed 500 million picks for DHL Supply Chain, a global leader in contract logistics.

According to Locus, the 500 millionth pick occurred on May 18, 2024 at DHL’s facility in Toledo, Spain. A LocusBot helped retrieve a consumer home goods product. Locus said its AMRs are deployed at more than 35 DHL-managed sites worldwide. The partnership between the two companies, which started in 2017, continues to set new benchmarks in the logistics industry.

“At DHL, we are relentlessly focused on driving innovation and operational excellence through our Accelerated Digitalization strategy aimed at deploying automated solutions at scale,” said Sally Miller, chief information officer at DHL Supply Chain. “Locus Robotics has been a trusted partner in this effort and this milestone achievement underscores the improved productivity, accuracy, and employee ergonomics we’ve enjoyed across our global network.” 

It took DHL 2.5 years to reach the first 10 million picks with the LocusBots and then 28 months to complete the next 100 million picks. Remarkably, the last 100 million picks took just 154 days. DHL is part of DHL Group. In 2023, DHL Group reported a revenue of more than €81.8 billion.

“We are thrilled to celebrate this momentous achievement with our esteemed partner, DHL Supply Chain,” said Rick Faulk, CEO of Locus Robotics. “Their unwavering commitment to innovation and their trust in our LocusBot solution have been instrumental in attaining this remarkable milestone. We are proud to play a pivotal role in DHL’s ongoing success and look forward to many more milestones as we continue our collaboration.” 

Locus Robotics won a 2024 RBR50 Robotics Innovation Award. The awards are produced by Automated Warehouse‘s sister publication The Robot Report. It won an award for surpassing 2 billion picks for its customers in August 2023. The milestone came just 11 months after it surpassed the 1 billion pick mark in 2022, for which it also won an RBR50 Robotics Innovation Award.

However, Locus has already surpassed the 3 billion pick mark, doing so in April 2024. It reached this milestone just 33 weeks after it recorded its 2 billionth pick. The Wilmington, Mass.-based company said its 3 billionth pick was a Carhartt T-shirt. The pick occurred at a Carhartt facility in Hanson, Ky.

Founded in 2014, Locus Robotics builds AMRs that collaborate with human pickers to increase warehouse efficiency. Locus serves the retail, healthcare, manufacturing, and third-party logistics (3PL) industries and offers a robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) model.

Written by

Steve Crowe

Steve Crowe is Executive Editor, Robotics, WTWH Media, and chair of the Robotics Summit & Expo and RoboBusiness. He is also co-host of The Robot Report Podcast, the top-rated podcast for the robotics industry.

He joined WTWH Media in January 2018 after spending four-plus years as Managing Editor of Robotics Trends Media. He can be reached at scrowe@wtwhmedia.com