Robust.AI is building Carter warehouse robots into a DHL retail automation line

DHL Supply Chain signed a five-year strategic alliance with Robust.AI on December 2, 2025, starting with 15 Carter units in DHL retail operations in Mexico. DHL said the Mexico program made Carter the first collaborative robot deployed in its Latin American operations and noted that Carter was already in commercial use across North America before the rollout.

The DHL relationship began publicly in February 2024 with Carter pilots at a DHL warehouse, focused on picking and material movement. DHL logistics data helped refine product workflows, placing Carter beside autonomous forklifts, robotic arms, and AMRs inside the broader DHL Supply Chain automation portfolio.

Carter is designed for human-guided warehouse collaboration rather than lights-out autonomy. The robot measures 0.72 meters wide, 1.4 meters long, and 1.94 meters high, carries a 100-kilogram payload, and runs for up to 18 hours on one charge. A force-sensitive handlebar lets workers guide it with one hand, while 360-degree vision, holonomic drive, and put-to-light LEDs support worker sequencing.

Aptiv adds a supplier layer. In November 2025, Aptiv and Robust.AI announced a strategic cooperation to co-develop collaborative robots, with Aptiv supplying perception, compute, and software elements for Carter, including PULSE sensing and Wind River platforms. Robust.AI contributes the Carter platform and human-centered warehouse design.

Robust.AI launched in 2019 with Rodney Brooks, Gary Marcus, Anthony Jules, Henrik Christensen, and Mohamed Amer among the founding group. Brooks previously co-founded iRobot and Rethink Robotics, while Robust currently lists Anthony Jules as founder and CEO and Brooks as founder and CTO. The competitive field includes Locus Robotics, 6 River/Shopify-era collaborative carts, Fetch/Zebra AMRs, Collaborative Robotics Proxie, DHL internal automation efforts, and manual cart picking. Robust.AI's distinction is a worker-steered collaborative robot designed to fit into existing picking labor rather than replacing the entire process.

Public material does not show Carter units by North American customer, pick-rate uplift, robot utilization by shift, service-response time, intervention frequency, worker training time, or commercial renewal metrics. The strategic test is whether DHL can turn Carter into repeatable retail logistics capacity. If the Mexico rollout scales across DHL sites with measurable worker productivity, Robust.AI becomes a collaborative warehouse operations layer rather than a mobile robot supplier.

Have a robotics update Korthos should review? Send news, deployments, product releases, funding rounds, research, or media to tips@korthos.xyz or reach out on X at @agkorthos.