Vending machine
AssigneesWeihai New Beiyang Digital Technology Co., Ltd., Shandong New Beiyang Information Technology Co., Ltd.
InventorsJiabo Xu, Chong Zhou, Qiangzi Cong, Tianxin Jiang, Chuntao Wang
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
This application relates to the technical field of automatic vending, and provides a vending machine that includes a control device, a measuring device, a bucket, a bucket driving mechanism configured for driving the bucket into motion, and a storage column configured to store items. The control device controls the measuring device to measure a first distance and a second distance, calculates a difference between the first distance and the second distance, and calculates a number of items in the storage column based on the difference.
Claims10
A vending machine, comprising:
- a control device;
- a bucket;
- a bucket driving mechanism, configured for driving the bucket into motion;
- a storage column, configured to store items, wherein the storage column comprises a pushing plate and a pushing plate driving mechanism, and wherein the pushing plate driving mechanism is configured to drive the pushing plate to move on an item conveying path of the storage column thus pushing an item placed in the storage column out of the storage column from an outlet of the storage column in an item dispensing direction;
- and
- a measuring device, disposed on the bucket and configured to measure a distance between a target obstacle on the item conveying path and the bucket and a distance between the pushing plate and the bucket, the target obstacle being an obstacle nearest to the bucket on the item conveying path;
- wherein the bucket driving mechanism, the pushing plate driving mechanism, and the measuring device are each electrically connected to the control device;
- and
- the control device is configured to control the measuring device to measure the distance between the pushing plate and the bucket in the item dispensing direction as a first distance, control the measuring device to measure the distance between the target obstacle and the bucket in the item dispensing direction as a second distance, calculate a difference between the first distance and the second distance, and calculate a number of items in the storage column based on the difference.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.