ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,330,885, issued on June 17, was assigned to Illinois Tool Works Inc. (Glenview, Ill.).
"Laned container flow equalizer" was invented by Douglas A. Imes (Greer, S.C.), Geromy Lanich (Greer, S.C.) and Craig Mummert (Greer, S.C.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A system for controlling a flow of articles includes a conveyor driven in a direction to convey articles in the direction. A plurality of lanes are disposed along a portion of the conveyor. Each lane accepts a row of articles along the conveyor direction. A plurality of sensors count the articles in each lane. A plurality of actuators control the flow rates of the articles by comparing...