JD.com opens the world’s first unmanned warehouse in Shanghai’s Jiading District. [Photo/Jiading.gov.cn.]

China’s second-biggest e-commerce player JD.com has opened the world’s first unmanned warehouse in Shanghai’s Jiading District, as part of its strategy to build an unmanned logistics system.

The whole process is fully automatic in the Jiading warehouse, which is also the first of its kind in the world. Different types of robot arms and numerous smart robots equipped with 2D or 3D machine vision are deployed in the logistics center to complete the four main duties, including unloading parcels from trucks, parcel storage, sorting and packaging. The 40,000-square-meter center can hold as many as 60,000 boxes of goods.

The warehouse is equipped with numerous smart robots. [Photo/Jiading.gov.cn.]

Another feature of the new logistics center is that it’s environmentally friendly. According to a staff member of JD.com, the roof of the warehouse is made of solar panels, which can store and generate the electricity for facility operation at night. 

Last but not least, as revealed by Richard Liu, founder and CEO of JD.com, the establishment of an unmanned warehouse in Beijing is also underway. Once completed, it will replace all human employees with AI machines and robots.