United States Postal Service

Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation

William P McConnell

Edward F Houston

Juan A Roman

Leung Man Shiu

Matthew Gene Good

John W Brown

Thomas Anthony Hillerich, Jr

Riley H Mayhall

Robert E Hume

David Jerome Tilles

Daryl Sunny Mileaf

David Brian Hendrickson

Jacob L Timm

Darin Dickey

Christopher D Austin

Robert L Schlender

Long Ha

Reza Badri

Riley Houston Mayhall, Iii

Mark David Bittenbender

Michael Joseph Goldberg

Thomas A Hillerich

Long K Ha

Systems and methods for towing, hitching, and connecting devices are described. An autonomous guided vehicle includes an automated hitch capable of connecting to a variety of types of containers.

Automated hitch for automated vehicle

Embodiments of a system and method for shingulating, singulating, and synchronizing articles in an article feeder system are disclosed. The article feeder system may include a shingulating device configured to receive a stack of articles and to produce a positively lapped stack of articles, a plurality of picking devices configured to pick one or more articles from the positively lapped stack of articles and to produce one or more singulated articles, and one or more synchronization devices configured to deliver the one or more singulated articles to one or more sorter windows.

System and method of article feeder operation

Embodiments of a system and method for unloading articles from a container of items for use in an automatic stack feeder are disclosed. The automatic stack feeder may comprise a belt, a moveable lower paddle, and a moveable upper paddle, wherein the lower paddle is configured to partially extend through a belt of the automatic stack feeder. The movement of the belt, the lower paddle, and the upper paddle are coordinated such that there is no need to interrupt the operation of the automatic stack feeder to unload the container.

System and method of unloading a container of items

Embodiments of a system and method for singulating articles in an automatic stack feeder are disclosed. The automatic stack feeder may comprise a pressure sensor on a perforated drive belt assembly configured to sense the pressure exerted by a stack of articles. The sensed pressure may be used to control various portions of the automatic stack feeder, such as a belt or a paddle.

System and method of automatic feeder stack management

An automatic stack feeder having a moveable stack or product guide is disclosed. The automatic stack feeder may be configured to receive a stack of articles and a container enclosing a stack of articles. To ensure the stack of articles is properly supported following unloading from the container, the stack guide is moveable between a first and a second position, wherein the stack guide is in contact with the stack of articles while in the first position, and not in contact with the stack when in the second position.

Article feeder with a retractable product guide

A method and an apparatus for collating a plurality of groups of mail items, such as flats mail, each group being pre-sequenced according to prioritized delivery addresses, into a final sequenced set of the mail items from the groups, utilizing the prioritized delivery addresses. Each bundle of mail items is formed into a single input stream of the individual mail items. The mail items are transported along a conveyor system from the input stream to a staging station. The mail items are sorted at the staging station into a plurality of subsets of mail items re-sequenced as an intermediate step to achieving the final sequenced sets. The mail items are then collated and merged into a single output stream from the respective subsets of mail items in the final sequenced set. Portions of the output stream from the staging station are collected in batches which maintain the sequence consistent with the prioritized delivery order sequence of the mail for a given carrier route.

Flats bundle collator

Growing community of inventors

Woodstock, MD, United States of America

William P McConnell