German retailer Otto Group will test up to 25 AI robots that sort returned orders
Two-armed robots run by Sereact's AI will open, check and sort returns in Poland. The companies did not say what the robots cost, and they say workers will move to supervising rather than lose their jobs.
Otto Group, which calls itself the largest online retailer of European origin, said Oct. 30 it will test AI-controlled robots that inspect and sort returned customer orders. The Hamburg, Germany, company is working with Sereact, a robotics software company in Stuttgart.
Which robots
The robots are Sereact's two-armed returns stations. Ten will start at Otto's logistics center in Poland, the companies said, and 15 more may follow based on the results, for a total of 25. If the second phase works, Otto will consider using them across its warehouses.
Each station uses collaborative robot arms, a type built to work near people, behind safety fencing, according to Sereact's website. Two arms matter because returns need teamwork, the company says: one arm holds a parcel open while the other reaches inside, or steadies an item while it is scanned. Sereact did not name the company that makes the arms. Its own product is the AI that runs them, called Cortex.
What they will do
At Otto, the robots will grasp each returned item, identify it, judge its condition and sort it to the right place, the companies said. Sereact's website says its returns station can also open boxes and parcels, take items out, scan barcodes and labels, look for damage, fold clothing, sort items for resale, repair or disposal, and separate out packaging waste. Neither company said the robots will test whether products still work.
Returns are hard to automate because items come back folded, crumpled or repackaged, and a big retailer's stock keeps changing. Older warehouse robots need to know each product ahead of time. Cortex is a vision-language-action model, an AI that takes in camera images and instructions and decides how to move, and Sereact says it can handle items it has never seen without being taught each product.
How they are trained
Sereact turns real grabs from the returns line into thousands of practice versions in computer simulations built with Nvidia's Isaac Sim and Isaac Lab software, the companies said. Nvidia, the Santa Clara chipmaker, also supplies AI models called Cosmos that redraw those scenes with different clothing, packaging, materials and lighting. The robots' skills are then fine-tuned on Nvidia's Blackwell chips and tested on cases they have not seen before they reach the warehouse.
When a robot struggles with an item, a tested fix can arrive within days instead of weeks, the companies said. Sereact says every station it has installed shares what it learns, so each one improves from the others' experience.
Cost and jobs
The companies did not say what the project costs. Sereact will run and maintain the robots under a robotics-as-a-service deal, in which a customer pays for the robots' work instead of buying them outright. The project is part of Otto's medium-term plan to invest 350 million euros in technology and AI.
Otto says the robots will not push people out. Workers will shift from repetitive grabbing and lifting to supervising the robots, handling unusual cases and making final quality decisions, the companies said. Sereact's website, describing its robots in general, says one robot can do the work of three to 4.5 full-time workers, depending on the shift pattern. The companies did not say how many people work in returns at the Poland center.
"A robot that only knows yesterday's catalog is of little use in a returns center," said Ralf Gulde, Sereact's CEO and co-founder. He said every return the robots handle improves the AI for the next one.
Source: Otto Group and Sereact announcement, Oct. 30, 2026; Sereact, returns handling page; Sereact home page.