Empowered with artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and automation, the "Asia No.1" smart logistics center in Beijing is redefining its efficiency during the Spring Festival holiday, from storage, packaging, sorting to last mile delivery.

The 2026 Spring Festival, which is also known as Chinese New Year, fell on Feb 17 and marked the start of the Year of the Horse -- the seventh of the 12 zodiac animals in the Chinese zodiac. The official holiday lasts for nine days which began on Feb 15.

To meet the surging demand during the holiday, the center has deployed a combination of robot clusters and AI-powered systems, significantly improving the storage, soring and and delivery efficiency of the Chinese New Year goods.

During the holiday, the warehouse has handled peak daily outbound volume of 12,000 orders, with an average of three items dispatched every second.

The entire logistics covers a vast area with one apparel warehouse alone spanning more than 3,000 square meters, roughly the size of seven standard basketball courts. Inside the warehouse, the most striking feature is the rows of shelves towering 12 meters high, stacked layer upon layer like giant LEGO walls. The shelves hold tens of thousands of boxes of goods, equivalent to the annual inventory of a small supermarket. Therefore, the high-density shelving layout maximizes space utilization, laying the foundation for efficient outbound processing.

In addition to space utilization, robots of different kinds work are playing a key role in enhancing efficiency. In the warehouse, climbing robots are seen retrieving items from between the racks, while ground robots are taking over to transport them onward, accelerating the sorting and dispatch of festive orders.

A total of 87 transport robots are operating on the warehouse floor, moving swiftly and flexibly. Equipped with sensors, the robots can accurately detect their surroundings, avoid collisions, and read QR codes on the floor for precise positioning, allowing them to navigate orderly through the warehouse. Compared with traditional manual handling, coordinated robot operations have boosted transfer efficiency by 73 percent.

The robots' onboard systems are synced with cloud-based data. With predictive models and scheduling algorithms, the picking routes are optimized so the robots can pick more items while traveling shorter distances, significantly improving efficiency.

Enhanced efficiency is also associated with the sci-tech. An "AI New Year Goods Map" helps predict regional demand through intelligent, full-process management, enabling smart inventory allocation, pre-positioning of goods and flexible coordination between multiple warehouses. As a result, orders for festive goods across multiple platforms have surged.

Moreover, automated packaging also improves efficiency. In the past, workers had to press buttons to seal parcels. Now, with a simple hand gesture from a worker, the packaging system can automatically seal packages. While the time saved per parcel is minimal, but across tens of thousands of orders, the gains in shipping speed and efficiency are significant.