Exotec robots ‘save warehouse workers from walking nearly 30 million kilometres’

Data published by Exotec says that, since the company’s first delivered site in 2017, its warehouse robots have covered a distance of 28,791,005 kilometres (17,889,901 miles) – equivalent to 37 return trips to the moon.

The company says its Skypod robots have logged over 5 million kilometres (3.1 million miles) at the longest drive site, with an average of 1.75 million kilometres (1.1 million miles) across Exotec’s 10 busiest sites.

To date, Exotec’s Skypod robots have completed almost 230 million cycles globally. The company defines one cycle as the act of a robot retrieving a bin, bringing it to a picking station, and returning the bin to storage.

A single cycle can account for as many as four orders. Exotec has been experiencing explosive growth since its founding, reaching the first 100 million cycles in five years and only taking one year to complete the second 100 million.

Since delivering its first system to Cdiscount in 2017, Exotec’s Skypod systems around the world have reached a cumulative 425,000 hours of usage time with more than 99 per cent uptime.

This is equal to nearly 18,000 days or 50 years spread across 15 countries worldwide. Outside of the European market, the vast majority of Exotec sites are located in the United States and Japan. To date, the largest site the company delivered has over 235,000 storage locations.

Renaud Heitz, CTO and co-founder of Exotec, says: “Our rapid growth trajectory clearly reflects the broader trend towards enhancing safety and productivity in warehouse environments.

“It’s rewarding to know we’re making a significant difference in the daily working lives of so many people.”