Patent ID: 8295980

Claim:
A deployment system adapted to remove articles stacked on a support surface, said articles being located in a plurality of orientations and/or positions on said support surface, said deployment system comprising: a height sensor system including a transmitter to one side of the stack of articles and a corresponding receiver to another side of the stack of articles directly opposite the transmitter, the transmitter and receiver being fixed in position in the same horizontal plane; a drive mechanism configured to raise the support surface automatically until an uppermost article on the support surface interrupts a beam between the transmitter and the receiver; an article detector configured to determine an orientation and position of at least one non-overlapped article located on said support surface, the article detector including a single camera only, the camera located in a fixed position directly above a work surface which contains the uppermost articles in the stack, and a processing means for receiving an image from the single camera and programmed to identify one or more predetermined identification features present on each article and to determine a selected article priority for removal from the work surface based on an article selection algorithm; a removal system configured to engage with and remove an article from said support surface; and a manoeuvring system configured to position the removal system to engage with a selected article having the highest priority for removal and move the selected article to a predetermined position and/or orientation.