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AssigneeOcme S.R.L.
InventorsAnnalisa FAIMALI, Luigi CERINELLI
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An automatic guided vehicle for the handling of shuttles and/or loading units in automatic warehouses. A telescopic upright integral with a vehicle frame bears a fork holder plate provided with a pair of forks and connected to the telescopic upright with an equipment. The equipment includes actuators and sensors for controlling and commanding the movements of the forks. An actuator controls the global lateral translation of the fork holder plate. A pair of actuators moves the forks closer to and away from each other. A pair of actuators rotates the fork holder plate with respect to a central axis of the equipment. The equipment also includes a pair of fork side sensors, to check the alignment of the fork holder plate to the front side of a rack and fork alignment sensors to check the alignment of the forks with respect to the lateral guides of the tunnel.
An automatic guided vehicle for the handling of shuttles and/or loading units in automatic warehouses, comprising a plurality of vertical uprights carrying a plurality of opposite “L” shaped side guides to accommodate a unit load and/or a shuttle, wherein said vehicle comprises a telescopic upright integral with a vehicle frame bearing a fork holder plate provided with at least one pair of forks and connected to the telescopic upright with an equipment, wherein the equipment comprises a plurality of actuators and a plurality of sensors for controlling the movements of the forks, the equipment comprising an actuator for controlling the global lateral translation of the fork holder plate, at least one pair of actuators for moving the forks towards and away each other, a pair of actuators for rotating the fork holder plate with respect to a central axis of the equipment, the equipment also including at least one pair of fork side sensors, placed externally with respect to them, to check the alignment of the fork holder plate to the front side of a rack and fork alignment sensors to check the alignment of the forks with respect to the lateral guides of a tunnel, said sensors being housed in both forks.
A method for controlling an automatic guided vehicle for the handling of shuttles and/or loading units in automatic warehouses, comprising a plurality of vertical uprights carrying a plurality of opposite “L” shaped lateral guides to accommodate a loading unit and/or a shuttle, said method comprising placing the automatic guided vehicle in a target position with at least one pair of forks inserted in a tunnel of the automatic warehouse at a height suitable for the picking/depositing operation of a shuttle and/or a loading unit to be carried out, wherein the alignment error of a fork holder plate, hinged to a telescopic upright of the vehicle with respect to a rack is controlled by the measuring of the distance between the fork holder plate and the front side of the rack carried out in correspondence with the lateral guides on both sides of the forks by one or more pairs of forks side sensors, and/or by the measuring of the distance between the sides of the forks and the lateral guides carried out for each one of the forks by at least two fork alignment sensors located under the forks on the outside.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.