Watching robots awkwardly flop around, cause robot body pile-ups on the soccer field, and accidentally lose their heads while taking part in a 1500-metre sprint at the first Robot Humanoid Games in China was not only entertaining, it was a reminder of just how far robotics has come — and how far it still has to go.

While humanoid robots still struggle to walk across a stage, in other corners of the world automation is quietly revolutionising industries. At Picnic Technologies, the Netherlands’ fastest growing online supermarket, robots are compiling your grocery orders so delivery ‘shoppers’ can get them from the warehouse to your refrigerator as fast as possible.

It’s these innovations that have helped the once humble startup scale rapidly to compete with supermarket behemoths like Albert Heijn. The company’s CTO, Daniel Gebler, recently shared the secrets behind the company’s success with TNW founder, Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, as they drove through the streets of Amsterdam in the latest episode of “Kia’s Next Big Drive.”

Check out the full interview — recorded en route to TNW2025 in Kia’s all-electric EV9 — by clicking on the image below: