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Watching robots awkwardly flop around, cause robot body pile-ups on the soccer field, and accidentally lose their heads during a 1500-metre sprint at China’s first Robot Humanoid Games was not only entertaining but also a reminder of just how far robotics has come—and how far it still has to go. While humanoid robots struggle to walk across stages, automation is quietly revolutionizing industries in other parts of the world.
At Picnic Technologies, one of the Netherlands’ fastest-growing online supermarkets, robots are compiling grocery orders so that delivery “shoppers” can get them from the warehouse to customers’ refrigerators as fast as possible. This innovation has helped Picnic scale rapidly and compete with supermarket giants like Albert Heijn. Picnic’s CTO, Daniel Gebler, shared the company’s success story with TNW founder Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten during a recent episode of “Kia’s Next Big Drive,” recorded en route to TNW2025 in Kia’s all-electric EV9.
Gebler holds a PhD in AI and is driving automation at scale, but he acknowledges that robots won’t replace humans entirely. At Picnic’s fulfillment centers in the Netherlands and Germany, 1,500 robots work alongside 1,000 humans. Here’s why:
– **Bananas and Champagne:** Robots struggle with irregularly shaped items, fragile goods like eggs, or high-value products such as champagne bottles.
– **Packing Efficiency:** Humans can easily rearrange crates to maximize space, while robots require predefined layouts and have trouble opening boxes.
– **Final Touches:** Even in highly automated centers, the last step—packing items into a customer’s delivery box—is still done by hand.
To address these limitations, Picnic uses product whitelisting, ensuring that only suitable orders are filled by robots. For example, an order containing bags of crisps and heavy bottles of soda would be rejected for robotic handling.
So, will robots ever completely replace warehouse shoppers? “Absolutely not,” Gebler says. “Our goal is to use robots to boost our warehouse’s performance, with humans remaining at the core of our operations.” Automation makes Picnic faster and more efficient but it’s a collaboration, not a takeover.
The rise of AI is also transforming management within companies. While Gebler believes that traditional forms of management will evolve into something more dynamic, ownership remains crucial as everyone becomes a designer, builder, and operator.
At Picnic, developers have used this freedom to:
– Launch return deliveries using the company’s delivery vans.
– Offer curated meal packages rather than individual products.
Gebler is also advocating for “AI-free Fridays,” dedicated time where developers can sharpen their human skills. While AI excels at data analysis, it still can’t improvise like a human.
In grocery warehouses and corporate boardrooms, the future isn’t humans versus robots—it’s humans with robots. Automation handles repetitive, structured tasks while humans excel in areas requiring adaptability, creativity, and judgment.
From bananas and champagne to AI-free Fridays, Picnic is proving that the future of work is not about replacement but reinvention.
