Hai Robotics is a Shenzhen warehouse-robot company, founded in 2016, that makes autonomous case-handling robots (ACRs): mobile robots with a lift that pull totes or cartons straight from racking and bring them to a picking station. Its HaiPick systems store totes in racks up to 12 m high, per Hai’s current pages, and its newest, HaiPick Climb, uses robots that climb the rack itself. Hai says more than 10,000 of those climbing robots are contracted in 12 countries. It sells directly and through partners such as Dematic, with no public prices.
What an ACR does
Most goods-to-person robots move whole shelves (as Amazon’s do) or run on a grid (as AutoStore does). An ACR instead drives down normal-looking rack aisles, raises a fork or gripper to the right level, takes totes into a small onboard buffer, and delivers them to a station. Because the racks are ordinary steel shelving, a site can often reuse its building height without building a grid. Hai’s product page lists several robot types: multi-layer A42 robots, telescopic-lift A42T models, the A3 fork-lifting robot, grapple-hook versions for deep storage, and the HaiClimber.
Which machine does which job
The systems differ in how the work is split between robots. This is what Hai’s own pages say each machine does:
| Step | HaiPick System 3 | HaiPick Climb |
|---|---|---|
| Reaching the rack and pulling the tote | A42T-E2 telescopic grapple-hook ACR, top to bottom of the rack | HaiClimber, climbing channels fixed to the rack, from both sides of the aisle |
| Moving totes across the floor | K50 transit AMR at up to 4 m/s, between rack bottom and stations | The HaiClimber itself drives under and between racks (up to 4 m/s on the floor) |
| Handing over at the station | Totes dropped onto conveyors or into buffer areas; conveyor, tray/de-tray or desktop workstations | Delivered “directly to workstations”; five station types listed |
| Storage depth (current page) | Triple-deep | Double-deep (2026 upgrade) |
Sources: Hai’s System 3 page, A42T-E2 page, HaiPick Climb page and HaiClimber page, checked October 24, 2026. Hai doesn’t say in so many words that the HaiClimber carries totes all the way to the station on the floor, but its pages describe it moving beneath racks and delivering directly, with no separate transport robot named.
HaiPick Systems 1 and 2 are Hai’s earlier configurations. System 1 uses ACRs with inbound and outbound workstations and racks up to 12 m and two totes deep; System 2 adds heavy-duty companion AMRs for bulk and pallet goods. Hai doesn’t name the robot models per system, so ask which model and rack height each proposal uses.
Reading Hai’s numbers
Every rate Hai publishes is in totes, at three different levels. A tote delivered to a station isn’t the same as a pick or an order line: one tote can serve several picks, or none if it’s a replenishment move. Hai publishes no picks-per-hour or order-lines-per-hour figure, so don’t convert.
- Per robot: the A42T-E2 handles a tote in about 2.7 seconds going up or down and transports 63 totes an hour, per its product page. Hai doesn’t say exactly what the 2.7 seconds covers.
- Per workstation: the Climb page lists stations rated up to 200 to 600 totes an hour depending on type (600 for the 1-to-1 high-performance station, 340 for on-robot picking).
- Per system: HaiPick Climb is rated at up to 4,000 totes an hour outbound within 1,000 m², and the March 2026 upgrade announcement claims up to 45,000 totes in that area with double-deep storage.
All of these are Hai’s own figures for its maximum configurations, and Hai doesn’t say how many robots or workstations sit behind the 4,000 figure. They aren’t a forecast for your site, and figures for System 3 and Climb shouldn’t be lined up against each other, because they measure different things.
Hai’s specs have also changed over time. At System 3’s October 2023 launch, trade coverage reported 10 m height, five-deep storage and up to 50 totes per square meter; Hai’s current pages say 12 m, triple-deep and about 43 totes per square meter. Ask which figures a proposal is based on.
Customers and scale
An August 2026 report on the 10,000-robot HaiPick Climb milestone names ANTA, Panasonic, Arvato, ITOCHU, METTLER TOLEDO and True Protein among customers, and gives Hai’s Americas base as Norcross, Georgia. In its January 2026 partnership announcement with Dematic, Hai cited 1,800+ projects in 40+ countries and 60+ partners. A September 2026 trade report says Hai will supply more than 1,500 Climb robots to an unnamed European fashion retailer, which would make it the largest rack-climbing deployment announced so far.
How to buy Hai Robotics systems
- Share order data, SKU dimensions and building drawings so Hai or a partner can design the rack layout and number of robots.
- Choose the channel. In Europe, Dematic now integrates Hai systems under a framework signed January 14, 2026; elsewhere Hai sells directly or through about 60 partners.
- Ask for a simulation on your own order profile, and compare it against other goods-to-person designs on the same data; our Geek+ guide covers its competing RoboShuttle tote robots, and the AMR companies comparison sorts vendors by robot type.
- Agree on acceptance tests before signing: which throughput, measured how, over how many hours, at what order mix.
What to compare in each quote
Ask every bidder to state the same items, so the quotes compare like with like:
- Order profile used: SKU count, order lines per order, lines per hour at peak and on an average day, and how many totes each order touches.
- Throughput basis: totes per hour, picks per hour and order lines per hour as separate numbers, at peak and sustained over a full shift.
- Workstations: how many, which type, and how many operators each needs.
- Operating hours: shifts per day, and the time robots spend charging.
- Robots and storage: robot model and count, rack height, storage depth and tote positions.
- WMS integration: which side builds the interface to your warehouse management system, and what it costs.
- Integration responsibility: who owns racks, conveyors, safety, software and the overall throughput guarantee, especially when a partner such as Dematic is in the deal.
- Service: local support staff, response times, spare parts and software updates.
Hai doesn’t publish prices or a subscription rate. For how robot rental pricing works across vendors, see our RaaS pricing guide.
For a Chinese supplier with latent-lifting and forklift AMRs instead of ACR tote robots, see our Hikrobot guide.
Hai Robotics, Dematic and trade press pages checked October 24, 2026.