| CPC B65G 43/10 (2013.01) [B65G 39/12 (2013.01)] | 20 Claims |

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1. A method for operating a conveyor system to transport an object disposed thereon, wherein the conveyor system comprises a plurality of motor driven rollers (MDRs) and having defined a sequence of zones, the method comprising:
detecting a presence of the object in a first zone of the conveyor system using a first photo-eye, the first zone having a first MDR rotational speed;
generating a virtual map to describe a real-time location of the object within the conveyor system that is dynamically determined based at least in part on predicting the presence of the object in a given zone at a given timepoint based at least in part on a previously detected and/or predicted presence of the object in one or more preceding zones and a MDR rotational speed of each preceding zone;
in accordance with the predicted presence of the object in the given zone at the given timepoint, configuring a MDR rotational speed of the given zone for at least the given timepoint; and
evaluating an accuracy of the virtual map responsive to detecting the presence of the object in a final zone of the conveyor system using a second photo-eye.
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