Amazon Technologies, Inc.

Long Xuan Nguyen

Ohil Krishnamurthy Manyam

Ramanathan Palaniappan

Yasser Baseer Asmi

Sudarshan Narasimha Raghavan

Gopi Prashanth Gopal

Avishkar Misra

Nadya Dhalla

Sudheer Babu Ramoji

Allan Henry Vermeulen

Daniel Buchmueller

Michel Leonard Goldstein

Fletcher Liverance

Raymond Wheekyun Lim

Anamika Sinha

Michael L Rhodes

Jon Robert Ducrou

Xiao Li

Kin Ming Kwan

Michael Benjamin Deardeuff

Chance Ackley

Dominic Corona

Jeffrey Michael Yunes

Alexei A Kudriavstev

Keith Hieber

Nicolaus Hudson

This disclosure describes an item drop location for placing items that have been picked from an inventory location within a material handling facility but have not yet been transitioned from the materials handling facility and a return location for returning items that have been transitioned from the materials handling facility. Likewise, described is a system and method for identifying an item placed at a drop location or an item placed at a return location, processing the placed item and providing confirmation to a user that placed the item and facilitating a return of the item or a removal of the item from an item identifier list associated with the user.

Inventory item release apparatus and method

This disclosure describes a system for determining an estimated user departure time from a materials handling facility. For example, a user may enter a materials handling facility to pick one or more items from the materials handling facility. Those items may be provided to an agent for processing, such as packing, while the user picks other items within the materials handling facility. To ensure that the items are processed in a timely manner and made available to the user when the user is ready to depart from the materials handling facility, the implementations discussed determine an anticipated user departure time and compare that time with an estimated processing time needed to process the items.

Item tracking within a facility

Systems and methods are disclosed to implement an indexing engine that maintains an index in an index store for a storage object in a data store. In embodiments, the index store may be implemented using an in-memory storage cluster separate from the data store. The storage object may have multiple indexes, which may have different filtering or sorting criteria for the data. In embodiments, updates to the storage object are received as an update stream by the indexing engine. Based on configurable indexing rules, the indexing engine applies the updates to the appropriate indexes. To service a query to the data store, a query engine first retrieves a set of keys satisfying the query from the index store, and then data corresponding to the keys from the data store or another index. In embodiments, the index may be refreshed via touch updates of selected data in the storage object.

Data store indexing engine with automated refresh

A medical scope device such as an endoscope is produced using a cast aluminum process including a molten casting aluminum alloy including a maximum of 0.2-0.3% Si and at least 5% Zn. The process includes providing an investment casting mold, casting the aluminum alloy in the mold to create a component and removing the mold from the component, post-machining the component to meet a desired specification, and after post-machining the component, performing surface finishing, such as centrifugal barrel finishing (CBF) sufficient to remove impurities on casting surfaces by 2-3 mils, then coating the component with a micro-crystalline aluminum anodic coating of at least 0.5 mil thickness. A medical scope and product-by-process is also provided employing such techniques.

Medical device and method of manufacture yielding medical devices with consistent surface features

Methods, systems, and computer-readable media for lottery-based resource allocation with capacity guarantees are disclosed. A job request is received from a first client. The job request is submitted to a capacity management system that schedules jobs in a pool of compute resources. The pool comprises a first quantity of one or more slots and a second quantity of one or more slots. The second quantity is associated with a capacity guarantee for a second client. It is determined that the first quantity of one or more slots are in use by one or more jobs initiated prior to receiving the job request. It is determined that the second quantity of one or more slots comprises an available slot. The available slot is allocated to the job request.

Lottery-based resource allocation with capacity guarantees

Methods and apparatus for a transactional watch mechanism are disclosed. A distributed system includes a state manager coordinating access to a registry. In response to a watch establishment request specifying target elements of the registry for which update notifications are to be provided and an indication of a notification destination, the state manager determines a watch establishment timestamp, and initiates a sequence of asynchronous update notifications to the destination, corresponding to each update to a target element completed after the watch is established. The notifications are provided in the order in which the corresponding updates are applied. The sequence includes exactly one update notification for a given update and excludes update notifications for elements of the registry other than the specified target elements.

Transactional watch mechanism

Methods and apparatus for tightly-coupled external cluster monitoring are disclosed. A system includes a service-providing cluster with a first set of nodes, and a monitoring cluster with a second set of nodes. Nodes of the monitoring cluster comprise respective monitoring agents operable to issue probes to nodes of the service-providing cluster in accordance with a first cluster health monitoring policy, and generate a health check record of the service-providing cluster based on probe results. At least one node of the service-providing cluster comprises a meta-monitoring agent operable to generate a health check record indicative of a health state of the monitoring cluster based at least in part on a second cluster health monitoring policy.

Tightly-coupled external cluster monitoring

The application describes a system and process for anticipating when a user will leave a selection area within a materials handling facility and determining if a notification requesting that the user provide a tote of picked items to a drop off location should be presented to the user. For example, a user may be asked to provide items picked from a selection area for processing, such as packing, while the user is picking items from other selection areas of a materials handling facility.

Notifying users to provide picked items to a drop off location for processing

Inventory item release locations

Methods and apparatus for versioned read-only snapshots of shared state for distributed applications are disclosed. A distributed system includes a state manager implementing programmatic interfaces defining caching operations. In response to a cache setup request from a process of a distributed client application, the state manager designates elements of a registry as a cache data set, and provides the client process a reference to an asynchronously updated cache object. The state manager initiates a sequence of asynchronous update notifications to the cache object, wherein each notification includes (a) updated contents of an element of the cache data set, and (b) a cache version identifier based at least in part on a registry logical timestamp value indicative of a time at which the element was updated.

Versioned read-only snapshots of shared state in distributed computing environments

Methods and apparatus for distributed locking interfaces are disclosed. A state manager implements programmatic interfaces for distributed locking operations. In response to a queue-for-lock request for a registry element received via an interface, the state manager provides to the requester, a reference to a first asynchronous computation. The first asynchronous computation comprises an insertion of a lock request into a queue of waiters for a lock on the element. In response to a blocking request for a result of the computation, the state manager transmits, after the lock request has been inserted into the queue of waiters, a notification of the insertion of the request. The notification in turn includes a reference to a second asynchronous computation. The second asynchronous computation comprises a grant of the lock on the particular element to the requester.

Asynchronous and idempotent distributed lock interfaces

In various embodiments, approaches for the placement of inventory in a materials handling facility are described. A virtual representation of a plurality of storage locations in a materials handling facility is maintained in a computer system. Each one of a plurality of inventory items is assigned to a corresponding storage location in the virtual representation. A first portion of the inventory items is stocked, and a second portion of the inventory items is unstocked. Each of the assignments is associated with a profit value. An event related to a change in state of the materials handling facility is input into the computer system. Each one of the second portion of the inventory items is reassigned in the computer system to a corresponding storage location in the virtual representation.

Non-binding placement of inventory in a materials handling facility

Methods and apparatus for distributed locking interfaces are disclosed. A state manager implements programmatic interfaces for distributed locking operations. In response to a queue-for-lock request for a registry element received via an interface, the state manager provides to the requester, a reference to a first asynchronous computation. The first asynchronous computation comprises an insertion of a lock request into a queue of waiters for a lock on the element. In response to a request for a result of the computation, the state manager transmits, after the lock request has been inserted into the queue of waiters, a notification of the insertion of the request. The notification in turn includes a reference to a second asynchronous computation. The second asynchronous computation comprises a grant of the lock on the particular element to the requester.

Methods and apparatus for a semaphore mechanism in a distributed computing environment are disclosed. A state manager coordinating accesses to objects from distributed clients implements programmatic interfaces for semaphore operations. A client process submits a permit record directed to a semaphore instance protecting a shared resource. The client process receives a representation of permit records associated with the resource. The permit records provide an indication of an order in which permit requests for the resource were processed. The client process uses the permit records to determine whether it has been granted a permit, and if it determines that the permit has been granted, performs operations on the resource.

Growing community of inventors

Seattle, WA, United States of America

Long Xuan Nguyen