ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,275,594, issued on April 15, was assigned to Daifuku Co. Ltd. (Osaka, Japan).
"Article transport facility" was invented by Toshihito Ueda (Hinocho, Japan), Tatsuki Ii (Hinocho, Japan), Akira Suzuki (Hinocho, Japan), Tomoaki Nishikawa (Hinocho, Japan) and Shota Inden (Hinocho, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An article transport facility includes a transport vehicle and a segment controller. When the transport vehicle is to travel on a first route section, the transport vehicle requests first passage permission, which is passage permission to travel past a first passage location, from the segment controller. When the transport vehicle...