ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 7 -- United States Patent no. 12,596,985, issued on April 7, was assigned to AutoStore Technology AS (Nedre Vats, Norway).
"Multiposition search" was invented by Karl Hatteland (Oslo, Norway), Ragnar Stuhaug (Skjold, Norway) and Kristian Berge Nessa (Finnoy, Norway).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A system for allocating jobs and/or targets to robots in an automated storage and retrieval system includes a plurality of robots and a framework structure forming a three-dimensional storage grid structure for storing containers. Each robot has wheels configured to move along two perpendicular horizontal directions on the grid. A central computer system manages robot movement a...