Pallet shuttle control systems
AssigneeSpacemaker Systems, Inc.
InventorsPaul Richard Bates, Christof Botha, Mertin Coetzee
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A pallet shuttle is provided for moving pallets along a tunnel in a storage rack. The pallet shuttle has magnets to prevent the pallet shuttle from falling off a fork lift vehicle as the pallet shuttle is being moved onto or off of a storage rack. The pallet shuttle also has distance measuring devices for precisely identifying the location of the pallet shuttle in the storage rack and/or in the tunnel of the storage rack to ensure that the pallet shuttle does not block areas that are required to remain open for fire safety purposes.
Claims13
A shuttle that is fixedly engageable on forks of a forklift vehicle and that is moveable along a tunnel of a storage rack to move a pallet along the tunnel, comprising:
- at least one magnet mounted in a position on the shuttle to align with and magnetically engage at least one of the forks of the fork lift vehicle for releasably holding the shuttle on the forks of the forklift vehicle;
- and
- means for releasing magnetic engagement of the magnet with the at least one fork of the forklift vehicle when the forklift vehicle has positioned the shuttle to move along the tunnel.
A position monitoring system for monitoring positions of a pallet shuttle along a tunnel of a storage rack, comprising:
- at least one positioning benchmark mounted to at least one position along the tunnel;
- and
- a position determining apparatus mounted on the pallet shuttle for determining a position of the pallet shuttle relative to the at least one positioning benchmark.
A monitoring system for monitoring movement of a pallet shuttle along a tunnel of a storage rack, comprising:
- a motor for moving the pallet shuttle along the tunnel in at least one moving direction;
- at least one sensor mounted at least to a front end of the pallet shuttle for identifying an obstacle in front of the pallet shuttle and generating a stop signal for stopping the motor in response to identification of the obstacle.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.