The fifth annual Intralogistics Robotics Survey from Peerless Research Group, MHI, and The Robotics Group found robotics moving from pilots into mainstream warehouse and DC operations. Fifty-two percent of 166 respondents already use at least one robot type, up from 48 percent, while 32 percent plan deployments within three years and only 3 percent have no robotics plans. Broader intralogistics automation (conveyors, sortation, AS/RS, shuttles) is used or under consideration by 58 percent, up from 46 percent.
Limited physical space now ranks as the top supply-chain challenge, ahead of labor cost and availability, because new well-located square footage is hard to add. Labor cost reduction remains the single most important robotics justification for 67 percent of respondents. Order or case picking is the leading planned use case at 57 percent, followed by heavy-payload forked or tugger transport (32 percent), sortation robots (31 percent), and collaborative in-aisle picking (30 percent).
Palletizing and depalletizing rank highest among performance-improvement needs even if they sit lower on the current consideration list. Typical time from project inception to go-live is six to twelve months, shorter than conventional fixed automation. Seventeen percent of recent buyers reached operational status in under a year.
Companies already using robots are expanding: 39 percent have new projects in approval or funding, 35 percent have funded work underway, and 46 percent expect to run more than five robot types within three years. Hybrid CapEx hardware plus software subscription is the most common commercial model (53 percent among current users). Seventy-four percent said robotics met business goals; 94 percent met or beat time-to-value expectations and 89 percent met process, safety, and risk targets.
Analysts interpret the data as evidence that after the first successful site, operators scale fleets, add buildings, and extend robots into receiving, dock, and high-reach work rather than stopping at a single picking aisle.