Patent ID: 9422116
Filing Date: 2016-08-23
CPC Classification: B65G

Claim Text:
1. A conveyor system comprising: at least one pair of motorized conveyor segments comprising rollers, belts, or bands for moving articles along a conveyor path; an article presence sensor located between each pair of consecutive motorized conveyor segments; a conveyor microcontroller controlling each motorized conveyor segment, the conveyor microcontroller being connected to two article presence sensors, one article presence sensor being located at the entry of the conveyor microcontroller's segment, and the other article presence sensor being located at the exit of the conveyor microcontroller's segment; a serial communication connection connecting the conveyor microcontrollers of each pair of consecutive motorized conveyor segments; an adapter connected to an industrial fieldbus network, the industrial fieldbus network allowing a barcode or a tag reader to signal individual article unique identities to the conveyor microcontroller; the barcode or tag reader being located at the conveyor system's terminus, junction segments, or both; the industrial fieldbus network further allowing a supervisory controller to be informed of article position and movement events, the supervisory controller controlling article routing motions at the conveyor system's terminus or junction segments; and the serial communication connection and supervisory controller forming a two-tier control system architecture; wherein the serial communication connection is one of the tiers and is private to the conveyor segment microcontrollers for article movement control messages.