ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,459,792, issued on Nov. 4, was assigned to Daifuku Co. Ltd. (Osaka, Japan).
"Article lifting/lowering apparatus" was invented by Hiroshi Otsuka (Hinocho, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "When a holding unit is lowered, a control unit gradually increases the lowering velocity of the holding unit toward a target lowering velocity, performs a constant velocity lowering operation of maintaining the lowering velocity of the holding unit at the target lowering velocity, and then gradually decreases the lowering velocity of the holding unit from the target lowering velocity to stop the holding unit. The control unit controls the drive unit t...