Patent ID: 8639382

Claim:
A unit-level materials handling system, comprising: a control system; a conveyance mechanism; a plurality of portable storage units, wherein each storage unit comprises one or more locations for stowing one or more types of items; one or more mobile robotic devices; one or more singulating induction stations, each singulating induction station located proximate to a portion of the conveyance mechanism, wherein each singulating induction station is configured for combined selection of items from inventory from one or more of the portable storage units and induction of single units of the items selected from the one or more portable storage units onto the conveyance mechanism; wherein the control system is operable to: direct each of the one or more robotic devices to transport particular storage units to and from particular singulating induction stations; direct a combined selection and induction of one or more single units of items from a particular storage unit, wherein to direct the combined selection and induction the control system is further operable to: direct, at a particular singulating induction station, the selection of one or more single units of items from one or more locations of the particular portable storage unit currently at the particular singulating induction station, wherein the particular portable storage unit currently at said particular singulating induction station includes units of items not needed by any of the downstream processing stations as well as the one or more single units directed for selection; direct, at the particular singulating induction station, the induction of each selected single unit into separate locations on the conveyance mechanism at the same particular singulating induction station where each selected single unit was selected from the same particular portable storage unit; and direct the conveyance of the inducted single units of the items to one or more downstream processing stations via the conveyance mechanism.