42 n SMART WAREHOUSES June 2026 www.drivesncontrols.com Project puts humanoid to work in a warehouse Accenture, SAP and Vodafone Procure & Connect are piloting the use of humanoid robotics in warehouse environments, demonstrating how physical AI can enhance operational efficiency, improve safety, and enable new approaches to workforce and business model design. The initiative reflects Accenture’s focus on applying advanced robotics and physical AI in real-world industrial environments, helping organisations to move from experimentation to practical deployment at scale. It also explores how humanoid robots could support the evolution of future workforce models, and create new revenue opportunities. The pilot programme was conducted at Vodafone Procure & Connect’s warehouse in Duisburg, Germany, where a humanoid robot operated alongside existing warehouse systems. Inspection tasks were sent to the robot via SAP’s extended warehouse management system, with the humanoid carrying out visual inspections autonomously across the facility. The humanoid identified operational inefficiencies, safety risks and optimisation opportunities across the warehouse. It detected misplaced or damaged products, assessed pallet stacking and weight distribution, highlighted unused storage space, and identified potential hazards such as obstacles in aisles or misaligned pallets. It reported its findings to the SAP system, allowing informed operational decision-making. “Through this pilot, we are exploring how humanoid robotics can improve efficiency, safety and operational visibility in our warehouse operations,” explains Reinhard Stefan Plaza Bartsch, global network logistics director at Vodafone Procure & Connect. “It also gives us a clearer view of how these capabilities could scale across our supply chain and support future business models.” The humanoid robot used in the pilot is powered by Accenture’s Robot Brain system, enabling it to interact naturally with human operators through voice, gestures and text. The robot was trained in digital twins of warehouse environments, built on Accenture’s Physical AI Orchestrator, which uses Nvidia technologies for video searches and the deployment of visual AI agents, to go beyond single repetitive functions and learn new skills through imitation and reinforcement learning. SAP led the integration of the robots into the warehouse management system, while Accenture designed and deployed the robot intelligence and operational framework, drawing on its expertise in physical AI, advanced robotics and digital twin environments. “Trained in digital twins and powered by physical AI, humanoid robots can reduce worker injuries and other warehouse safety incidents and lower overtime costs and the dependency on temporary labour,” explains Accenture’s advanced robotics lead, Christian Souche. “Equally important, Vodafone Procure & Connect will gather valuable data and insights on robot deployment and performance as a basis for a future humanoid workforce solutions business.” The project is using SAP’s AI execution fabric and interface for embodied AI (called Joule) to connect robots to end-to-end processes and business logic and alowing them to know why, when and how to act. “By grounding actions in trusted SAP data, we can automate health and safety incident reporting and real-time inventory validation to protect workers and strengthen compliance through consistent auditable workflows.,” says Dr Lukasz Ostrowski, head of embodied AI and robotics at SAP. n In a joint project, Accenture, Vodafone and SAP have been piloting the use of humanoid robots in warehouse operations. They have been exploring how physical AI and humanoids can transform supply chains and unlock new business models. A humanoid robot checking for misplaced or improperly stacked items
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