ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 1 -- United States Patent no. 12,722,891, issued on Sept. 1, was assigned to EXOTEC (Croix, France).
"Order preparation or buffer storage system" was invented by Alexis Lerouge (Hellemmes, France) and Loic Lepillier (Wasquehal, France).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An order preparation system including at least one automatically guided carriage which is intended to collect items of an order from shelves and is equipped with toothed wheels, which are mounted on retractable supports and are able to cooperate with racks or chains rigidly connected to the uprights of the shelves, so as to allow the carriage to ascend between two shelves, and with counter-wheels. A runner is...