Rohlík’s AI-Powered Warehouse: Robots & Efficiency in Vienna

The AI system automatically sorts orders based on delivery routes, reducing preparation time to between 12 and 30 minutes. It also boasts 94% delivery accuracy and leverages AI-powered predictions to minimize food waste by up to three times.

A key advantage of the system is its ability to forecast demand and plan restocking accordingly. Following a reopening in 2024, the center doubled its warehouse capacity and increased productivity by 50%.

“As soon as a customer completes an order, our AI system assigns it to a delivery route and processing queue. The picking and preparation of goods are largely automated and take an average of 30 minutes, with the fastest processing completed in 12 minutes,” explains Lorenz Diederichs, Director of Operations. “The automation of the center cost a lower tens of millions of euros.”

Currently, 70% of orders in the Vienna warehouse are processed fully automatically. Fragile items like fruits, vegetables, and baked goods, as well as the entire frozen food section, still require manual handling, as automation at very low temperatures isn’t yet sufficiently reliable. Large packs of mineral water are also handled manually. Gurkerl currently has approximately 25,000 active customers.

According to Tomáš Čupra, Founder and CEO of Rohlík Group, the opening of the AI distribution center is a milestone not only for Rohlík but for the entire online grocery shopping world.

“Together with AutoStore, we are demonstrating how first-class technology can make great food more accessible, faster, and with less waste. At Rohlík, we have always believed that technology should serve people – helping families eat better, fresher, and more sustainably. The Vienna distribution center shows what happens when this vision meets innovation on a large scale,” Čupra stated.

Artificial intelligence controls virtually everything within the facility. Automated receiving and order preparation are handled by the AutoStore grid, where small, cube-shaped robots move and search for boxes containing goods. These boxes are stacked in columns based on how frequently each item is ordered. If a customer orders a less popular item, the robots will rearrange the boxes. They aren’t alone in this task – approximately eighty robots assist with the process.

“The area with the most robots is below the picking ports, where the boxes are sent. Some robots are set up for preparation, some for sealing, and others work on dispatch or receiving,” explains Area Manager Matěj Král.

A robot can operate for about half a day on a single charge. When its battery runs low, it independently travels to a charging station and is replaced by another robot. According to Král, the charging process takes up to an hour. The robots also have a three-hour break at night and, like the rest of Austria, don’t work on Sundays.

Despite traveling at relatively high speeds and narrowly avoiding collisions, the robots have never crashed. However, they can occasionally drop a box, which requires the grid to be stopped and a technician to resolve the situation.

The development of the new technology is the work of Veloq, an AI startup incubated by Rohlík Group, and Norwegian company AutoStore, which specializes in robotic order fulfillment. The system handles more than 20,000 items and has nearly eliminated manual box handling. The two companies have also formed a partnership to expand the technology to Europe, North America, and other regions.

“Veloq was created to solve the most difficult problems in online grocery retail – managing freshness, short shelf life, and the complexity of the entire basket. We not only automate, but also orchestrate. By combining our AI platform with AutoStore’s precise hardware, we have created a complete end-to-end distribution solution,” says Richard McKenzie, CEO of Veloq.

AutoStore technology isn’t entirely new to Rohlík – the company already uses the system in the Czech Republic. However, the Vienna warehouse adds a feature not yet available in its Czech operations: fully automated AutoStore dispatch. This feature could be implemented in the Czech warehouses during future expansions, within the next 10 to 20 months.

Two robotic arms, named Haydn and Mozart, handle the sorting of specific items into boxes. These arms can process up to 600 items per hour. They receive boxes from the robots on the grid, pick the ordered quantity of each item, transfer them to another box, and then send it to a human employee who places the goods into bags before they are dispatched to the courier.

The arms identify how to grip items and handle them gently using cameras that recognize the fragility or surface of each product. Occasionally, however, they drop an item – requiring the entire order to be reprocessed by a human employee.

Král notes that the arms were initially tested in the company’s Berlin warehouse, in its German branch, Knusper. At the time, the arms made more errors, but are now 99.9% accurate. During a brief observation, it appears they struggle most with beer bottles, but handle wine bottles with relative ease.

“We should be getting two more arms soon. We are already thinking about what to name them,” he laughs, adding that he would suggest the name Falco for one of the arms.

Whether an order is processed by a robotic arm or a human employee is determined by artificial intelligence, which aims to maximize productivity. If an order comes in at the last minute, it’s usually handled by a person. However, the arms process approximately 95% of orders.

Automated dispatch also sorts completed orders automatically according to courier routes. Couriers simply need to load the bags from the prepared rack into their vehicles and deliver them to customers.