US-12617612-B2 - Mobile cart for storage and retrieval of payloads within a warehouse

US12617612B2US 12617612 B2US12617612 B2US 12617612B2US-12617612-B2

Abstract

The present invention relates to a material handling system using mobile cart which provides efficient storage and retrieval of payloads in a three-dimensional warehousing system and on multiple levels. In one embodiment, the mobile cart including a first frame comprising of eight wheels, the primary four wheels of the first frame are configured to move mobile cart in the ‘X’ direction motion, and the secondary wheels of the first frame which are pinion inbuilt wheels configured to move mobile cart in the ‘Z’ direction motion. Further, the mobile cart includes a second frame which is moveably attached to the first frame, the second frame including a gear motor, drive pulley, drive belt, four lead screw units, a plurality of sensors and tertiary four wheels, the tertiary four wheels are configured to move mobile cart in the ‘Y’ direction motion.

Inventors

Dheeraj VERMA
Manuj BANSAL
Naman Jain
Tuhinanshu TUHINANSHU

Assignees

FALCON AUTOTECH PRIVATE LIMITED

Dates

Publication Date: 20260505
Application Date: 20230428

Claims (7)

1 . A mobile cart for storing and retrieval of payloads between at least two pickup and delivery stands within a warehouse-type facility, comprising: a first frame including a drive system, a control system, and a payload area, the first frame comprising of four wheels, the primary four wheels of the first frame are configured to move the mobile cart in the ‘X’ direction motion, and the secondary wheels of the first frame which are pinion inbuilt wheels configured to move the mobile cart in the ‘Z’ direction motion; and a second frame which is moveably attached to the first frame, the second frame including a gear motor, drive pulley, drive belt, four lead screw units, a plurality of sensors, and tertiary four wheels, wherein the tertiary four wheels are configured to move the mobile cart in the ‘Y’ direction motion and the second frame is vertically moveable relative to the first frame via the four lead screw units; wherein relative movement of the first frame and the second frame enable the mobile cart for XYZ axis changes, wherein depending upon a relative frame position, one of the primary wheels, the secondary wheels, or the tertiary wheels selectively engage or disengage with a track of a path along which the mobile cart travels due to which the mobile cart is capable of moving independently in the Z direction from any point in the storage structure.
2 . The mobile cart as claimed in claim 1 , further including a wheel changing mechanism for achieving three dimensional motion during operation, wherein the mechanism is used for shifting ‘X’ to ‘Y’ direction motion, ‘Y’ to ‘Z’ direction motion & ‘X’ to ‘Z’ direction motion & vice versa.
3 . The mobile cart as claimed in claim 2 , wherein the wheel changing mechanism includes a gear motor ( 9 ), a drive pulley ( 12 ), a drive belt ( 16 ), four lead screw units ( 14 , 15 ) and proximity sensor ( 17 ).
4 . The mobile cart as claimed in claim 1 , wherein during change in direction motion, the tertiary four wheels are either raised or lowered using the gear motor ( 9 ), which rotates the wheels in clockwise or anti-clockwise direction.
5 . The mobile cart as claimed in claim 3 , wherein the sensors ( 17 ) are attached for lifting location confirmation.
6 . The mobile cart as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the first frame covering the payload area has retractable means for storage and retrieval of the payload, the retractable means includes a plurality of casing with a finger.
7 . The mobile cart as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the primary four wheels attached to assist in moving the vehicle horizontally, the secondary four wheels attached to assist the vehicle in moving vertically.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a mobile cart and, more particularly, to a mobile cart system controlled and managed by computer sub-systems for controlling guidance to storage and retrieval of payload from one or more storage locations. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION In the field of material handling, most commonly in a warehouse environment, many articles must be stored in inventory and, an indefinite time later, retrieved for use. The larger the warehouse facility, the greater the number of objects that can be stored. Moreover, large warehouse facilities require a great amount of geographical space. Not only are modern warehouses spread over a great amount of distance, but their height allows many objects to be stacked for storage one above the other. Each object location or bin can be identified along three axes: X, Y and Z. Thus, a warehouse location for any specified particular object can be uniquely identified. Most warehouses only utilize a fraction of their available vertical space due to many factors, including the limited range to access items stored at higher levels. Three-dimensional rack systems in the form of Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (often referred to as ASRS or AS/RS) have been proposed that store items on vertical storage racks. However, these vertical systems have several significant commercial drawbacks. Traditional ASRS systems had one gantry robot moving in a long aisle for storage/retrieval operations. The movement speeds were usually good, but limitation was that only one item at a time could be either stored or retrieved from the aisle. No parallel processing was possible. Next generation ASRS systems had mobile robots moving in X-Y plane(s) that solved the parallel processing problem. But the problem was solved only for one particular X-Y plane. The robots could not move vertically to cover the Z axis. There were some solutions which involved the use of lifts at strategic locations to enable robots to travel the Z direction. But those lifts resulted in bottlenecks where robots had to be queued for getting to a different Z level. Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) are typically used in warehousing to automatically perform various material handling functions with no or little human involvement. AGVs are commonly used to improve safety and reduce overhead by limiting the number of employees required to complete specific material handling tasks. Moreover, AGVs can be relied upon to operate continuously 24 hours per day. This advantage of performance over human labourers results in greater efficiency for warehouse facilities. The conventional AVGs are very much limited in the direction of movement, some are restricted their movement over the horizontal axis/plane and some AVGs are restricted over the vertical axis/plane. Even though prior teaching suggests about the movement on ‘X-Y’ and ‘Y-Z’ axes but their overall construction along with the rack system are very much complex or cumbersome in their operations. While advances have been made in such automated goods to delivery systems, there is still a need for automated AVGs which are less complex in constructional aspects and their operations to boost scalability and speed of deploying large systems. Also, there is a need in the art which increases efficiencies in utilisation of limited warehouse space and available energy. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The invention has been devised in view of the above-described limitations, and an objective of the invention is to provide an automated three axis mobile cart which can move in all the three dimensions to make the maximum use of storage space by efficiently storage and retrieval of payloads. In one aspect of the present invention is a mobile cart for storage and retrieval of payload between at least two pickup and delivery stands within a warehouse-type facility. In one embodiment, it includes a first frame including a drive system, a control system, and a payload area. The first frame comprising of eight wheels, the primary four wheels of the first frame are configured to move the mobile cart in the ‘X’ direction. The secondary wheels of the first frame which are pinion inbuilt wheels configured to move the mobile cart in the ‘Z’ direction. Further, includes a second frame which is moveably attached to the first frame, the second frame including a gear motor, drive pulley, drive belt, four lead screw units, a plurality of sensors and tertiary four wheels, the tertiary four wheels are configured to move the mobile cart in the ‘Y’ direction motion. The mobile cart achieves three-dimensional motion during operation by a wheel changing mechanism for shifting ‘X’ to ‘Y’ direction, ‘Y’ to ‘Z’ direction & ‘X’ to ‘Z’ direction & vice versa. As should be appreciated, the system, device and techniques described and illustrated herein can be utilized in numerous situations and environments including, but not limited to, warehousing, manufacturing, distribution, retail