System and method for conveyor maintenance
AssigneeAegis Sortation, LLC
InventorKenneth Jay Ice
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Systems and methods are provided for conveyor operation and maintenance that employ a “smart shoe” technology where one or more conveyor shoes incorporate features, such as an RFID tag, allowing selective wireless tracking and identification capability. A conveyor system comprises a shoe management system allowing interactions directly with a reader where interface between this application and the reader can be implemented via a socket interface. An open platform communications (OPC) wrapper can be created around the interface so that a Human Machine Interface (HMI) could interact directly with shoe management system.
Claims21
A shoe of a conveyor system, the shoe comprising:
- a housing;
- a pin component;
- and
- at least one radio frequency transceiver secured with respect to the housing.
A conveyor system comprising:
- a conveyor frame;
- at least one slat disposed on the conveyor frame;
- at least one shoe disposed on the at least one slat, the shoe comprising a housing, a pin component, and at least one radio frequency transceiver secured with respect to the housing;
- and
- a read station configured to establish communication with the radio frequency transceiver.
A method of operation of a conveyor, the method comprising:
- conveying, along a conveyor frame, a shoe comprising a housing, a pin component, and at least one radio frequency transceiver secured to the housing;
- the at least one radio frequency transceiver transmitting identification information uniquely identifying the shoe;
- and
- a read station establishing communication with the at least one radio frequency transceiver and receiving the identification information.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.