Inside look at a modern American robotic warehouse in Huntsville

May 06, 2023

The robot carrying this pallet of drinks is following a track inside what the Huntsville, Ala., warehouse owners say is the first robotic warehouse like it in America. C-Storemaster built the $20 million warehouse to supply its convenience store customers.

Rows of brightly lit display cases greet customers in the shiny lobby of Huntsville's new $20 million C-Storemaster Warehouse.

Those customers are typically owners or managers of neighborhood stores looking for a little bit of everything. The company already has a good idea of what everything means, so the cases display tobacco, headache powders, toilet paper, paper towels, candy, gum, sunglasses, antacids and other over-the-counter medicines, multiple items with your favorite football team's logo or mascot and boxes of the hemp-derived delta-8 THC that is legal in Alabama. That's just a sample of the inventory; there are many display cases.

C-StoreMaster built this $20 million robotic warehouse in Huntsville, Ala., to supply its small convenience store customers.

The lobby is large and welcoming, but the action is through the doors in back of the building: the 130,000-square-foot, two-story warehouse. That's where 80-plus smart robots make this giant room the first of its kind, C-StoreMaster president Sharan Kalva said at the December 2022 grand opening.

Customers don't normally go on the warehouse floor. Store owners may not even come to the warehouse if the order is a repeat purchase or familiar product. But there's second story mezzanine to get a look and a waiting room with games & TV for anyone making a pickup.

"With one shift, we’re able to do 400 orders a day," employee Jake Poczobut said. "The processes are much more streamlined than ever before." To repeat, the warehouse works one shift a day that processes up to 400 orders.

Humans work with the robots but no longer move the heavy warehouse delivery pallets. The 30-odd employees instead make sure orders are filled correctly and help out-load when a store truck rolls up for a pickup.

The heavy lifters – literally and figuratively - are three kinds of warehouse robots. Built by robot company Geek+, two kinds are "RS5″ factory shuttle robots and "P-800 goods-to-person robots." P-800 robots move loaded incoming pallets to their proper storage places, for example, and shuttle robots work on a smaller, more order-specific scale.

A Wulftech robot wrapping machine completes the robot trio.

The "staging areas" in the upper center of this photograph show the place workers get most involved in the operation of Alabama's first robotic warehouse. C-StoreMaster serves convenience stores and has people double-checking orders and helping load them at the loading bays to the right.

Inventory arrives by delivery truck in bulk and is cataloged, entered in the computer tracking system and stored on its pallets until the robots move it to storage shelves for selection by customers. Orders are received from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m.

It works like this. The P-800 robots then retrieve specific items from the warehouse shelves and bring them to "pickers" – human staff – who take the purchased products from the robots. If it is a bulk item, an associate puts it directly on a customer's pallet. Smaller orders are grouped by humans at the staging area in what are called "totes" for pickup.

If there are tobacco products, an RS-5 robot takes them first to the tax stamp area.

Poczobut pointed to the factory's "automated wrap machine that finishes each delivery package." When the wrapping is on, the order is officially filled, cleared and ready near the loading dock for pickup.

The robots move about the warehouse on floor tracks that can be rearranged. They are electrically powered and quiet. But If you get near its path, the robot emits a sound that leaves no doubt you’re getting in the way.

The multi-level system here is the first of its kind in the country, the company said. Not only have the robots increased productivity by three to four times, a spokeswoman said, they’ve eliminated the need for employees to lift the heavy goods.

(Updated to clarify that Geek+ made the robots and that is not the robots’ name)

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