| CPC B65G 1/1376 (2013.01) [B60L 13/03 (2013.01); B60L 13/04 (2013.01); B65G 1/0492 (2013.01); B65G 1/1371 (2013.01); B65G 1/1373 (2013.01); B65G 54/02 (2013.01); B60L 2200/26 (2013.01); B60L 2200/44 (2013.01); B60L 2240/62 (2013.01); B60L 2240/70 (2013.01); B61B 13/02 (2013.01); B65G 1/0407 (2013.01); B65G 2203/0283 (2013.01); B65G 2209/04 (2013.01); B65G 2811/095 (2013.01)] | 20 Claims |
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1. A warehouse system for sorting items to fulfill orders, the system comprising:
a conveyance system comprising:
a plurality of shuttles configured to receive and transport individual items of the items;
a plurality of manual decantation stations, each manual decantation station being configured for a worker to manually load the individual items directly onto individual shuttles of the plurality of shuttles; and
a track defining a plurality of pathways along which the plurality of shuttles controllably travel, wherein each shuttle of the plurality of shuttles controllably travels along the pathways independently of all other shuttles of the plurality of shuttles;
a first automated order sortation system arranged to receive at least some of the individual items and configured to aggregate the at least some of the individual items into one or more groups in accordance with the orders; and
a control system in data communication with the conveyance system and the first automated order sortation system, wherein the control system is configured to send control signals to the conveyance system to cause each shuttle of the plurality of shuttles to travel along the plurality of pathways in a manner based on a type of individual item of the items that each shuttle of the plurality of shuttles is transporting,
wherein two or more shuttles of the plurality of shuttles can be ganged together to operate jointly in a unified manner to transport large or heavy individual items of the items.
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14. A method of sorting items to fulfill orders, the method comprising:
picking or retrieving, from inventory storage, a plurality of items that are allocated for a plurality of orders; and
decanting, by a plurality of workers at a plurality of manual decantation stations, the plurality of items and placing individual items of the plurality of items directly onto individual shuttles of a conveyance system that includes a plurality of shuttles,
wherein the individual items are individually assigned a priority,
wherein the individual shuttles that are transporting lower priority items of the plurality of items are held in a temporary buffer storage portion of the conveyance system until the individual shuttles that are transporting higher priority items of the plurality of items are moved ahead of the individual shuttles that are transporting the lower priority items, and
wherein the individual shuttles transport respective individual items to a particular final order sortation system of a plurality of final order sortation systems because the particular final order sortation system is processing one or more orders that include the respective individual items.
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