ABB Robots and the Grocery Shelf Restocking Problem

Supermarket shelves were always stocked by hand. Now robots restock overnight, and ABB's Item Picker, IRB 1300 and IRB 365 FlexPicker build the orders.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/20/20261 min read

Someone put every can, jar and cereal box on that shelf by hand. Night crews broke down pallets, slit cases open, faced the product forward and got out before the doors opened. Automation stopped at the loading dock. Past the conveyors and the pallet jacks, the work was still arms and knees.

A supermarket aisle lined with packaged goods, every facing placed on the shelf by hand
A supermarket aisle lined with packaged goods, every facing placed on the shelf by hand

A grocery aisle in Vermont. Every facing on those shelves was placed by hand. Photo: Tessa Bury / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

That is starting to change. A paper published this month describes a mobile manipulator restocking real supermarket shelves overnight, running 724 pick-and-place events at a 98 percent success rate and docking itself to charge. Brain Corp has put an arm on its store robots under Project Brawn, tracking over 50,000 products per store.

Empty metal shelving in a supermarket aisle waiting to be restocked
Empty metal shelving in a supermarket aisle waiting to be restocked

An empty shelf is the job a restocking robot is hired for. Photo: Maksym Kozlenko / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Amazon has opened a robot-run grocery format, and Ocado's grid bots already push past 65,000 orders a week at a single site. ABB works upstream of the shelf, in the rooms where those orders get built. Its Robotic Item Picker uses AI and vision to grip loose items out of an unsorted tote.

Ocado warehouse bots moving totes across a storage grid in a grocery fulfilment centre
Ocado warehouse bots moving totes across a storage grid in a grocery fulfilment centre

Ocado grid bots running the storage grid at a grocery fulfilment site. Photo: Techwords / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

It runs on arms like the IRB 1300, which ships with Wizard Easy Programming. In grocery packing halls the IRB 365 FlexPicker hits up to 120 picks a minute with food-grade lubrication and IP54 protection, while IRB 460 and IRB 660 palletizers stack the mixed pallets that leave for stores.

An ABB robotic picking and packing cell enclosed in a frame at a logistics trade fair
An ABB robotic picking and packing cell enclosed in a frame at a logistics trade fair

An ABB picking and packing cell shown at LogiMAT. Photo: Vasyatka1 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

What is still missing is the last fifty metres, dock to shelf. I expect the vision models and grasp planners tuned inside distribution centres to migrate into store robots, with ABB's OmniCore controller and RobotStudio simulation doing the unglamorous work underneath both ends of the trip.

Three orange ABB robot arms handling wrapped white products on a packing line
Three orange ABB robot arms handling wrapped white products on a packing line

ABB arms handling and packing product on a factory line. Photo: Tecnowey / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The household version is the same problem, smaller. A robot that can grip a dented box on a crowded shelf is most of the way to one that unpacks your shopping and loads the fridge. Grocery restocking is just where somebody is currently paying to solve it.

Early orange ASEA and ABB industrial robot arms, including an IRB 6, on display
Early orange ASEA and ABB industrial robot arms, including an IRB 6, on display

Early ASEA and ABB arms, including the IRB 6, the lineage behind today's picking cells. Photo: Dependability / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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