Apparatus and method for sorting articles
OwnerBenjamin James Goodger, Olga Perederieieva +1inventors
InventorsBenjamin James Goodger, Olga Perederieieva, Nigel Jonathon Beach
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Abstract
In one embodiment, an apparatus for sorting articles includes a carrier arranged to carry articles from an input to one of a plurality of outputs, a sorting controller arranged to control which output an article is delivered to dependent on a determined characteristic of the article and respective sorting criteria associated with each said output, wherein the sorting criteria comprise a value parameter of a completed package of articles associated with the respective outputs.
Claims24
An apparatus for sorting articles, the apparatus comprising:
- a carrier arranged to carry articles from an input to one of a plurality of outputs;
- and
- a sorting controller arranged to control which of the plurality of outputs an article is delivered to dependent at least in part on a determined characteristic of the article and respective sorting criteria associated with each said plurality of outputs, wherein the sorting criteria comprise a value parameter of a completed package of articles associated with the respective outputs.
The apparatus of any one of the preceding claims, wherein the sorting criteria for each of the plurality of outputs comprise one or more of the following:
- a target weight of a complete package;
- a current weight of a package;
- a target article count of a complete package;
- a current article count of a package;
- a target article grade;
- and a monetary value of a complete package.
The apparatus of any one of the preceding claims, wherein the characteristic of the article comprises a weight and/or a quality or a grading parameter.
The apparatus of any one of the preceding claims, wherein the sorting controller is arranged to determine a suitability score for each article for each of the plurality of outputs, and to control the carrier to deliver the respective article to the output with the best suitability score.
The apparatus of any one of the preceding claims, wherein the apparatus further comprises a packaging station coupled to each of said plurality of outputs, each packaging station being arranged to receive articles in order to complete packages of articles according to the respective sorting criteria.
The apparatus of any one of the preceding claims, wherein the apparatus further comprises a sensor for sensing articles to determine one or more said characteristics of each article.
The apparatus of any one of the preceding claims, wherein the apparatus further comprises one or more additional parallel carriers for carrying articles to the plurality of outputs, in order to increase throughput.
The apparatus of any one of the preceding claims, wherein the completed packages may comprise two or more of the following:
- a tray;
- a small bag;
- a large bag;
- and a box.
The apparatus of any one of the preceding claims, wherein two or more outputs of the plurality of outputs are associated with the same value parameter.
A method of sorting articles, the method comprising:
- receiving a plurality of articles;
- allocating each article of the plurality of articles to one of a plurality of outputs dependent at least in part on a determined characteristic of the article and respective sorting criteria associated with each of the plurality of outputs, wherein the sorting criteria comprise a value parameter of a completed package of articles associated with the respective outputs.
One or more non-transitory computer-readable medium that stores instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to:
- allocate each of a plurality of received articles to one of a plurality of outputs dependent at least in part on a determined characteristic of each of the plurality of received articles and respective sorting criteria associated with each of the plurality of outputs;
- wherein the predetermined criteria comprise a value parameter of a completed package of articles at the respective outputs.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.