WARSAW, Poland, June 11, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nomagic, a leading robotics company applying advanced Physical AI to warehouse automation, today announced that its Shoebox Picker, has been named Piece Picking Robotics Innovation of the Year by the SupplyTech Breakthrough Awards. The win marks a major industry endorsement of Nomagic’s leadership in next‑generation warehouse automation and it is the second significant industry recognition for the solution after being named a finalist of the IFOY Awards 2026 in the Innovation of the Year category.
In fashion e-commerce, shoeboxes constitute approximately 20% of all items – for footwear fulfillment centers, this percentage is significantly higher. Yet the two-piece shoebox has long been considered one of the most complex unpickable items and incompatible with traditional vacuum or mechanical grippers.
“Being awarded Piece Picking Robotics Innovation of the Year is a powerful validation of our Physical AI approach,” said Kacper Nowicki, CEO and Co‑founder of Nomagic. “Shoebox Picker proves that Physical AI can reach mastery and deliver huge value to end users applying specialized tools with a general AI brain for robots. We focus on use cases that matter to the industry and solve them completely: offering both high reliability and high throughput.”
“The core advantage of the Shoebox Picker is keeping the robot embodiment constant, representing a crucial milestone in robotic tool use. This strategy offers versatility while being far more robust and better controllable than humanoid designs," notes Chief Scientist Markus Wulfmeier. "This integrates with our internal Physical AI, driven by VLA paradigms. Leveraging the millions of SKU interactions within our 'Library of Chaos'—a high-density dataset of real-world edge cases—the system possesses an inherent grasp of the environment. It enables rapid adaptation to new hardware constraints, specifically the complex structural dynamics between shoebox lids and bases.”
Shoebox Picker integrates this advanced AI perception directly with intelligent end-of-arm tooling. This allows the robot to autonomously transition between picking, packing, and sorting. It can dynamically adjust its grip, ensuring stability and precision across a wide range of packaging variations, which traditional automation systems could never achieve.
As a result, Nomagic and Zalando recently announced that the global fashion and logistics leader is scaling Nomagic’s technology as part of a partnership expansion, installing up to 50 AI-powered Nomagic robots across its fulfillment centers, including Shoebox Picker units. Shoebox Picker will handle 98% of all shoebox SKUs, picking 450 shoeboxes per hour – 2-3x more than standard manual picking. To watch a video of Shoebox Picker in action, visit https://nomagic.ai/solution/shoebox-picker/.
The SupplyTech Breakthrough Awards, a part of the Tech Breakthrough Organization, is a recognition platform for companies and individuals driving significant advancements in the supply chain and logistics industry through technology. Last year’s program attracted thousands of nominations from over 15 different countries throughout the world. For more information about the SupplyTech Breakthrough Awards program, visit supplytechbreakthrough.com.
About Nomagic
Nomagic is a leading warehouse robotics company, applying breakthrough general-purpose Physical AI to optimize warehouse operations. The company's deployed robots learn from a massive set of real operational data, built over millions of tasks in 24/7 environments, that trains an adaptable Physical AI platform handling a variety of warehouse tasks. Nomagic’s next-generation VLA (visual language action) models integrate automatically into the fleet of AI-powered robots, accelerating autonomy, improving efficiency, while setting the industry standard for the fastest deployment time. For more information visit nomagic.ai.
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A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/459ce107-b18b-4ef6-941c-ebd9c727aa52
