JD.com Accelerates Robotics Push with Plan to Automate Logistics Network

Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com is accelerating its push into robotics with a sweeping plan to automate its nationwide logistics network, while promising to retrain its vast workforce of couriers for technical roles as machines take over frontline duties.

At an event in Beijing on Wednesday, the company’s logistics arm unveiled its industrial Wolf Robot series. Over the next five years, JD Logistics aimed to procure 3 million robots, 1 million unstaffed vehicles and 100,000 delivery drones to create a fully automated supply chain, according to Cao Peng, the chairman of the company’s technology committee.

Designed to take up repetitive, labour-intensive tasks and operate in challenging conditions, the Wolf Robot system would pick, sort, transport and deliver goods with minimal human intervention, said Liu Lige, head of embodied intelligence robots at JD Logistics.

The line-up included specialised units capable of operating in cold environments down to minus 20 degrees Celsius, automated pharmacy dispatchers and delivery drones, Liu said.

The rapid shift towards automation comes as JD and its ecosystem companies continue to employ some 700,000 delivery and logistics personnel.

To address job displacement concerns, founder Liu Qiangdong outlined earlier this year the company’s so-called Nirvana Plan, an initiative to retrain couriers and warehouse staff for technical roles like robot servicing and maintenance, ensuring frontline workers were retained as automation spread.