Patent ID: 7210890

Claim:
A fork-liftable combination of a refuse container and a side-loading robotic arm mechanism for operative use with a supplied front-loading, waste collecting vehicle, where the vehicle has frontwardly extending forks and where said fork-liftable combination is characterized by: (a) the side-loading robotic arm mechanism having a major portion of its mass mounted rearward of a rearmost, refuse-containing wall of a major refuse containing volume defined by the container when said combination is liftably and operatively supported in front of a supplied waste collecting vehicle; and (b) the container having fork-receiving pocket means attached to sides of the container for receiving the forks of the supplied front-loading vehicle and thus allowing said combination to be fork-liftable, where the fork-receiving pocket means extend or are extendible rearwardly of said rearmost refuse-containing wall of the container so as to space the rearward-mounted major-mass portion of the robotic arm mechanism in front of a hypothetical clearance plane, where the clearance plane extends through rearward pocket-approaching points of the forks of the front-loading vehicle so as to limit possibility of collision between the vehicle and the major-mass portion of the robotic arm mechanism due to the vehicle moving forward towards the hypothetical clearance plane and due to a lifting by the vehicle of the fork-liftable combination.