US Patent Issued to W.W. Grainger on May 26 for "Robotic vending machine system" (Illinois, Texas Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 26 -- United States Patent no. 12,640,000, issued on May 26, was assigned to W.W. Grainger Inc. (Lake Forest, Ill.).

"Robotic vending machine system" was invented by Geoffry A. Westphal (Evanston, Ill.), Viraj Sagar Sahgal (Chicago), Jean-Marc Francois Reynaud (Chicago), Erwin Cruz (Lake Forest, Ill.), Thomas Allen Mathis (Tolono, Ill.), David Brenner (Round Lake, Ill.), Sampo Juhani Karvonen (Allen, Texas) and Mehrdad Zakershahrak (Libertyville, Ill.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A vending system including a vending machine and a robot. The robot can be adapted to retrieve product from the vending machine for delivery to a user. When the vending machine is mobile, the r...