Patent ID: 11915562
Assignee: WEIHAI NEW BEIYANG DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD
Field: Control (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 0:
1. An item dispensing method of an automatic vending machine, wherein the automatic vending machine comprises a cabinet, a control apparatus, a storage apparatus, a plurality of item columns disposed within the cabinet, a pickup port disposed on a surface of the cabinet and a delivery apparatus disposed between the plurality of item columns and the pickup port, and the delivery apparatus comprises a hopper and a hopper drive mechanism configured to drive the hopper to move between the plurality of item columns and the pickup port; the item dispensing method of the automatic vending machine comprises:
receiving, by the control apparatus, a purchased command, and determining, by the control apparatus, all items to be purchased by a user according to the purchase command,
determining, by the control apparatus, all of item combination manners having a lowest number of item dispensing operations as candidate item combination manners according to first space geometrical information of the hopper and second space geometrical information of each type of items to be purchased which are stored in the storage apparatus;
determining, by the control apparatus, all of pickup manners for picking up items in each of the candidate item combination manners;
determining, by the control apparatus, all of item dispensing paths in one-to-one correspondence to all of the pickup manners of all of the candidate item combination manners; according to a correspondence between each type and the plurality of item columns accommodating items which is stored in the storage apparatus; and
selecting, by the control apparatus, an item dispensing path having a highest efficiency from all of the item dispensing paths as a target item dispensing path, and controlling, by the control apparatus, the hopper drive mechanism to drive the hopper to dispense items based on the target item dispensing path.