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

Claim 11:
12. An automatic vending machine, comprising a control apparatus, a storage apparatus, a cabinet, 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, wherein 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 hopper drive mechanism and the storage apparatus are each electrically connected to the control apparatus, and the control apparatus is configured to:
receive a purchase command, and determine all items to be purchased by a user according to the purchase command;
determine, 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, all of item combination manners having a lowest number of item dispensing operations as candidate item combination manners;
determine all of pickup manners for picking up items in each of the candidate item combination manners;
determine, according to correspondence between each type of items and the plurality of item columns accommodating items which is stored in the storage 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; and
select, from all of the item dispensing paths, an item dispensing path having a highest efficiency as a target item dispensing path, and control, based on the target item dispensing path, the hopper drive mechanism to drive the hopper to dispense items.