ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 15 -- United States Patent no. 12,600,582, issued on April 14, was assigned to Zebra Technologies Corp. (Lincolnshire, Ill.).

"Systems and methods for optimized container loading operations" was invented by Patrenahalli M. Narendra (Hoffman Estates, Ill.) and Miroslav Trajkovic (Setauket, N.Y.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method includes: receiving, for items in a staging area, item identifiers and staged locations in facility coordinates, as detected via a sensor; obtaining a load configuration including a load sequence defining an order for loading the items into a container, and a load location within the container for each item, in container coordinates; accordi...