Observing robots how robot bodies are piling up on the soccer field and accidentally losing his head, while he was not only entertaining on a 1500-meter sprint in the first robot humanoid playing in China, but also a memory of how far robotics have come and how far it still has to go.
While Humanoid robots still have difficulty going through a stage, industries are revolutionized in other corners of world automation. At Picnic Technologies, the fastest growing online supermarket in the Netherlands, robots create their food orders, so that the delivery “buyer” can bring them out of the warehouse as quickly as possible.
It is these innovations that quickly helped the once modest startup scale to compete with supermarket giants like Albert Heijn. The company’s CTO, Daniel Gebler, recently informed the secrets behind the success of the company with the TNW founder Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten when they drove through the streets of Amsterdam in the latest episode of “Kia’s Next Big Drive”.
Take a look at the full interview – on the way to TNW2025 in Kia is Reinelectric EV9 – By clicking on the picture below:
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Caption: Bler and Veldhuijzen van Zanten, who meanders through the channels on the way to TNW2025.
But while Glerer keeps a doctorate in AI and the automation drives on a scale, it is clear that robots will not completely replace people.
Bananas and champagne
Previously, Picnics “buyer” had to fill the orders and deliver them to the doors of the customers to run around large warehouses that choose every article.
Now the fully automatic fulfillment centers of the company in the Netherlands and Germany contribute to lightening the cargo (and the number of steps that the buyers must take) by automating the article to select the items with robot arms.
In his latest order fulfillment center in Oberhausen, Germany, Picnic can edit up to 33,000 online orders per day and serve up to 200,000 households. The warehouse employs 1,500 robots … and 1,000 people.
Why? Because some tasks of people are still better treated.
- Bananas and champagne: Robots fight with irregularly shaped objects, fragile goods such as eggs or high -quality products such as champagne bottles.
- Packaging efficiency: People can easily reorganize boxes to maximize the space, while robots need predefined layouts. You also have problems opening boxes.
- Liffer: Even in highly automated centers, the last step – the packing of articles in the delivery box of a customer – is still carried out by hand.
To avoid these limits, Picnic Product WHITELISTING uses to decide which orders a robot can fill. For example, an order with chips with chips and heavy soda bottles would be a NO -GO -for a robot.
So if robots develop, will you ever completely replace Picnick’s warehouse buyers?
“Absolutely not. As already mentioned, it is not our goal to replace it, but to increase the performance of our warehouse with robots. The buyers remain in the core of our warehouse, with robots complementing their efforts,” says the Picnic software engineer Jhon Mauro Gomez.
In other words, automation makes the picnic faster and more efficient, but it is a collaboration, not a takeover.
Could Ai come for your boss? (Don’t get your hopes too high)
The rise of AI also changes what “management” means within companies. But Glerer believes that AI does not completely eliminate management – it will reinvent it.
“Most likely there is what we no longer exist as management,” said Gebler. “The relevance of ownership – the possession of the building, the possession of what they operate is even more important. Because everyone becomes a designer, a building contractor and also an operator.”
This shift offers teams more autonomy and experiments for experiments. At Picnick, developers used this freedom to:
- Start return deliveries: Customers can now return retail items from other brands with Picnic’s vans, which makes the fleet more efficient.
- Offer meals, not just articles: Families benefit more from curated meal packages than putting individual products together.
The rise of “ai-free Fridays”
Blerer also urges “AI-free days” committed time in which developers cancel AI tools and sharpen their human abilities. Because while AI can build data, she still cannot improvise like a person.
Whether in grocery stores or corporate bodies, the future is not people against robots – they are people with robots. Automation is best when dealing with repeating, structured tasks. People shine in areas that require adaptability, creativity and judgment.
From bananas and champagne to AI-free Fridays, the picnic proves that the future of work is not about replacement, but about reinvention.
Photo credits: “BVOF Robocup2013 – Robocup Soccer NAO” by Robocup2013 is 2.0 under CC.
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