ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,459,734, issued on Nov. 4, was assigned to Daifuku Co. Ltd. (Osaka, Japan).
"Article storage facility" was invented by Tooru Siraisi (Tokyo), Tooru Arii (Tokyo) and Takehito Ito (Tokyo).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A specific transfer mode is a mode for causing a transport device to execute a first transfer operation, a travel operation, and a second transfer operation in this order. The first transfer operation is transferring a second article from a storage region to the transport device with use of a second transfer device, and thereafter transferring a first article from the storage region to the transport device with use of a first ...