ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,254,443, issued on March 18, was assigned to Amazon Technologies Inc. (Seattle).
"Robotic item recovery" was invented by Gregory Cartagena (Boston), Gabriel Hebert (Wakefield, Mass.), Caroline Anne Keely (Wakefield, Mass.) and Jonathan Lee Zerez (Honolulu).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Embodiments describe techniques for controlling picking robots to retrieve items on the floor and return them to an appropriate location. In one embodiment, the picking robots wait until a sensor in a monitored area (e.g., a designated robot area or an area around a pick/stow station) detects a dropped item on the floor. A central control system then disp...