Denmark

Danish Supermarket Trains Humanoid Robots to Stock Shelves

Are these the obvious fix for shifts nobody wants or a costly gamble on hands that still can't grip?

10 hours ago·Updated 1 hour ago

Danish Supermarket Trains Humanoid Robots to Stock Shelves

Story

Above: Hive robot on display at the NRF 2026 Europe retail technology exhibition in Paris, France, Sept. 16. Image credit: Riccardo Milani/Hans Lucas/AFP/Getty Images

The Facts

Salling Group, Denmark's largest retailer, is testing humanoid robots at a Føtex supermarket outside Copenhagen, where the machines are being trained to restock shelves during overnight hours when the store is closed to customers.
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Danish startup Hive Robots developed the robots, and Chinese manufacturer Unitree built them. They have been training since June, with human operators guiding every movement so the artificial intelligence can learn to grip and place products.
HIVE Robots
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Project leaders aim for the robots to restock shelves independently by early 2027, working mainly at night after closing. Training has included practice in handling fragile items such as cereal boxes and glass jars without dropping them.
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Tovima
Føtex estimates employees spend between 40% and 50% of their working time replenishing shelves. The trial is part of a wider partnership with Salling Group, which operates more than 2,000 stores across six European countries.
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Nacionale
Simon Kudsk, operations director at Føtex, said that with humanoid robots, "we gain a robot with the same physical form factor as a human — allowing them to move naturally and safely around the store."
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The machines still work more slowly than staff and require close supervision, and Danish law would need to change before they could operate autonomously among shoppers. Later stages could include checking expiry dates and spotting misplaced goods.
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The Spin

Techno-optimist narrative

Shelf stocking swallows a huge chunk of every shift, so handing that grind to machines once the doors close is just smart business. The overnight slot is the hardest to fill and the least rewarding, and staff time is far better spent helping customers than hauling cans and pasta. Learning the job one store at a time beats waiting around for perfect technology.

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Techno-skeptic narrative

Humanoid math looks great in a headline and ugly on an invoice once integration, charging, spare parts and midnight troubleshooting pile up. Hands remain the weak link, and stocking shelves runs entirely through fingertips that grip, adjust and sense without crushing anything. With little real-world data to learn from, years of costly supervision will likely come before any night shift runs itself.