ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,577,049, issued on March 17, was assigned to Ocado Innovation Ltd. (Hatfield, Great Britain).
"System of handling containers" was invented by Ioannis Kanellos (Piraeus, Greece) and Orestis Fainekos (Athens, Greece).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "System for handling containers and a method for supplying inventory items to a fulfilment station in a warehouse or in any other location where fulfilment of orders or delivery of orders, for example grocery orders, is taking place. The system includes at least one mobile inventory carrier for storing containers, a mini load system including a gripping mechanism for picking up or releasing a cont...