A Chinese delivery firm is moving to embrace automation. STO Express in the city of Linyi, east China's Shandong Province is now equipped with orange robots at the company's sorting stations, which are able to identify the destination of a package through a code-scan, virtually eliminating sorting mistakes. 

STO’s army of robots can sort up to 200,000 packages a day, and are self-charging, meaning they are operational 24/7. The company estimates its robotic sorting system saves around 70 percent of the costs a human-based sorting line would require.

China is the largest e-commerce market in the world, and will likely continue to grow. According to China Internet Watch, E-commerce now accounts for about 14 percent of all retail sales in China. Total online retail sales rose 23.6 percent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2016 to 1.15 trillion yuan ($165 billion).

As online sales soar, the pressure is mounting on logistics infrastructure. Distribution networks will have to respond with greater accuracy, efficiency and speed.