Warehouse and Logistics Robots

Coupang, Korea's largest e-commerce company, operates highly automated fulfillment centers using thousands of autonomous mobile robots for picking, sorting, and packing. Naver Labs developed ROOKIE, an autonomous delivery robot operating inside Naver's Sejong campus and expanding to apartment complexes and office buildings. Doosan Robotics (a Doosan Group subsidiary) produces collaborative robots (cobots) for manufacturing and logistics, with over 10,000 units deployed globally.

Korea's logistics robotics adoption is driven by the same demographic forces as industrial robotics — labor shortages and an aging population — combined with extremely high e-commerce penetration (Korea has one of the highest per-capita online shopping rates globally). Coupang's "Rocket Delivery" (same-day/next-day) service requires warehouse automation levels comparable to Amazon.

Doosan Robotics went public in 2023 in Korea's largest IPO that year, signaling investor confidence in the robot-as-a-service model. The company's H-Series cobots are designed for human-collaborative environments and compete with Universal Robots (Denmark) and FANUC (Japan). Korea's cobot sector benefits from the domestic manufacturing base — a cobot designed in Korea can be tested in Samsung and Hyundai factories before being exported globally.