ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 18 -- United States Patent no. 12,325,586, issued on June 10, was assigned to Daifuku Co. Ltd. (Osaka, Japan).
"Picking system" was invented by Fumiaki Tatemi (Tokyo), Masaya Miyamoto (Tokyo), Wataru Kiyokawa (Tokyo), Kazunari Kimura (Hinocho, Japan), Masashige Iwata (Hinocho, Japan) and Yuichi Ueda (Hinocho, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A picking system includes a multi-tier sorting device having ports in a plurality of tiers at different levels in a top-bottom direction, and sorts and discharges each of articles to one of the ports in the plurality of tiers; a plurality of first transport devices respectively corresponding to the ports in the plurality of tiers...