Robotic Parcel Locker: From Post Counters to ABB Robots

A robotic parcel locker takes a courier's whole drop of parcels, stores each one inside a tower or cabinet, and hands the right box to the right person when they type in a code. It sits at the end of a long line of ideas for getting parcels to people who are not at home. This post follows that line from the post office counter and the first Packstation lockers to the robotic towers built in Estonia, then to this autumn's news from Bristol, London and Seoul. It also looks at where ABB robots already work behind the lockers and what still holds robotic lockers back.

An Amazon Hub Locker in Denver, Colorado, 2019. Photo: Raysonho / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

How parcels waited at the post office counter

Before lockers, a parcel that missed you went back to the post office. In the United States, parcel post only began on 1 January 1913, and a failed delivery typically meant a card in the letterbox and a trip to the counter during opening hours. A clerk found the parcel on a shelf, checked your name and handed it over. The system worked, but it tied every pickup to staff and to a building that closed in the evening.

Mrs. William Sulzer with a postal clerk and a package in the first year of US parcel post, 1913. Photo: Bain News Service / Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The first automated answer came from Germany and Austria. In 2000 Deutsche Post and the Austrian automation company KEBA started work on what Wikipedia describes as the world's first automated electronic parcel locker, building the prototype in a small workshop in Linz. Deutsche Post launched it as a pilot in Dortmund and Mainz in late 2001 under the name Packstation. Customers get a pickup code by text or email, type it into a touch screen, and the right door opens. By 2025 Germany had more than 15,500 Packstations, and 90 percent of people there lived within ten minutes of one.

A Deutsche Post Packstation in the snow, 2006. Photo: Klaus Mueller / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.5)

A locker wall still needs a courier to put each parcel into its own door. Robots took over that step in Estonia. Cleveron, which grew out of the logistics department of the online furniture store ON24 in 2007, introduced the CleverBox parcel locker in 2014 and a robotic pickup terminal called PackRobot in 2015. Inside the tower a robot stores parcels and brings them down to a hatch. The machine was later renamed Cleveron 401, but most people know it as the Pickup Tower, the name Walmart gave it as the first retailer to install it.

A Cleveron 401 robotic parcel tower in Tallinn, Estonia, 2019. Walmart called this machine its Pickup Tower. Photo: Jprmg / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Robotic parcel lockers and the robots behind them today

Ordinary lockers are spreading fast in Europe. On 24 September 2026 International Distribution Services, Royal Mail's parent, agreed to buy Quadient's UK network of about 3,000 lockers, which Dealroom put at about 65 million euros. Royal Mail says the deal takes its out of home network past 30,000 parcel points. Asda announced InPost lockers for 700 stores the same week, and in early October DHL bought the Austrian locker company myflexbox and raised its 2030 target to 50,000 lockers. In Czechia, where lockers were exempted from building law, there are now 17,000.

An open door on an InPost parcel locker with a cardboard parcel inside. Photo: Cybularny / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

The robotic version is being tested too. In mid September Evri ran a one week trial of a robotic neighbourhood parcel hub at Paintworks in Bristol, built by the local startup Collective Robotics. A courier stops once and unloads a whole round of parcels, and the hub uses AI and robotics to identify, sort and store them without anyone placing each parcel by hand. In Seoul, Hyundai Glovis and Samsung C&T signed an agreement on 16 September to develop robot delivery of mail inside buildings, with Glovis working on how deliveries are collected, stored and moved.

A Cleveron self-driving robot courier prototype, 2018. Photo: Jprmg / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB does not make parcel lockers, and we found no ABB robot inside one. The parcels in those lockers, though, pass through hubs where ABB robots already work. ABB's Robotic Item Picker uses AI vision and a suction gripper to pick items it has never seen before out of mixed bins, and in 2025 ABB launched item picking modules aimed at parcels. Our post on parcel sorting and induction covers that part of the chain. Cells like these are usually planned and tested in RobotStudio before they are built.

ABB's Robotic Item Picker, a small ABB arm with a suction gripper above two picking bins. Photo: ABB

Where robotic parcel lockers go next

For homes, the next step is moving the parcel the last few metres. Seoul is working on rules that would let robots deliver and park inside apartment complexes, according to KED Global on 28 September, and Samsung C&T has already tested food delivery to apartment doors at Raemian Leaders One with the robot company Neubility. Inside a building, a mobile robot could carry parcels from a locker room to each floor. ABB's Flexley Mover AMRs do this kind of indoor transport in factories, and using them in residential buildings would be a possibility.

The ABB Flexley Mover P604, which navigates with 3D Visual SLAM. Photo: ABB

On the logistics side, more lockers mean more sorting by locker address before the van leaves. Every parcel has to be picked, scanned and sent to the right route, which is repetitive handling of the sort suction grippers on ABB arms already do in sorting hubs. Inside the lockers themselves, Evri says its system is meant to manage storage space dynamically and adapt to changing parcel volumes, and future versions are expected to vary in shape and size.

An ABB robot with a large suction cup, from ABB's 2025 launch of new Item Picking modules for parcels and fashion. Photo: ABB

Money comes up first. Quadient said it would leave the lockers business partly to cut about 120 million euros of planned capital spending over five years, a sign of how much a large network ties up. Robotic towers add motors, sensors and maintenance to every site, and somebody has to fix them when a parcel jams. Robots that leave the locker and ride lifts or cross lobbies raise safety questions that a steel cabinet never did. The people side is still open too: Collective Robotics says the Bristol trial is meant to learn from couriers and neighbours what works and what needs to improve.

A DHL Packstation beside a Deutsche Post letterbox in Heidelberg, 2010. Photo: 4028mdk09 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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