Mapping boxes in a storage bay

• US 10,152,689 B2
• Filed: 07/14/2016
• Issued: 12/11/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 07/14/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Notohardjono, Budy D., Tsfasman, Arkadiy O., Werner, John S.
• Primary Examiner(s): St. Cyr, Daniel
• Application Number:
  US15/209,916
• Publication Number:
  US 20180018621A1
• Time in Patent Office: 880 Days
• Field of Search: 235385, 235380, 235383
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/087 Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/023 using mutual or relative location information between multiple location based services [LBS] targets or of distance thresholds
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/80 Services using short range communication, e.g. near-field communication [NFC], radio-frequency identification [RFID] or low energy communication

Abstract

Mapping boxes in a storage bay is provided, which includes: ascertaining storage bay boundaries; wirelessly reading, using a mobile device, identifying information from tags associated with the boxes, each box having one or more associated tags, and the identifying information including size information for the associated box; determining position of the tags in the storage bay by triangulating tag locations relative to, in part, one or more locations of the mobile device; and creating, by a processor, a mapping of boxes in the storage bay using the tag positions and the identifying information wirelessly read from the tags. In one or more implementations, the tags are near-field communication (NFC) tags associated with the boxes, and the creating may include automatically reorienting a floating box in the mapping of boxes, as well as automatically repositioning a box when boxes overlap each other, or overlap an edge of the storage bay.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

mapping boxes residing in a storage bay, the mapping comprising;

ascertaining storage bay boundaries;

wirelessly reading, using a handheld mobile device, identifying information from tags associated with the boxes within a proximity sphere of the handheld mobile device, each box having at least one tag associated therewith, and the identifying information including box size information for the associated box;

determining position of the tags in the storage bay by triangulating tag locations relative to, at least in part, one or more determined locations of the handheld mobile device during the wirelessly reading;

creating, by a processor, a mapping of location and orientation of boxes in the storage bay using, at least in part, the determined tag positions and the identifying information wirelessly read from the tags;

providing boundary tags at corners and along edges of the storage bay, and wherein the ascertaining comprises wirelessly scanning the boundary tags affixed to the corners and along the edges of the storage bay to ascertain the storage bay boundaries; and

determining a current location of the handheld mobile device by trilateration based, at least in part, on measured distances between the handheld mobile device and at least three boundary tags affixed to the storage bay boundary, the determining of the current location facilitating the automatically determining position of the tags in the storage bay.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the tags are passive tags wirelessly powered and read by the handheld mobile device.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the tags are selected from the group consisting of near-field communication (NFC) tags, Bluetooth communication tags, short-range Wi-FI tags, and RFID tags.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the wirelessly reading comprises wirelessly reading, using the handheld mobile device, the identifying information from the tags associated with the boxes multiple times from different locations of the handheld mobile device, and the automatically determining includes using the multiple readings in triangulating tag locations within the storage bay.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein at least two boxes of the boxes within the storage bay are differently sized, and the mapping comprises providing a map with representations of size and location of the boxes in the storage bay.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the creating comprises automatically reorienting a floating box in the mapping of boxes in the storage bay.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the creating initially orients each box in the storage bay so that the box'"'"'s largest dimension is into the storage bay, and so that a second largest dimension of the box is oriented horizontally within the storage bay.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein the creating further comprises automatically repositioning boxes in a row of boxes in the mapping of boxes when boxes overlap or a box overlaps an edge of the storage bay boundary.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the automatically repositioning comprises, for a bottom row of boxes in the mapping of boxes, automatically aligning boxes in the bottom row of boxes to a bottom edge of the storage bay.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the automatically repositioning comprises automatically moving a box overlapping a side edge of the storage bay boundary inward.

11. The method of claim 8, wherein the automatically repositioning comprises, on a first pass through the row of boxes, automatically shifting a box of two adjacent, overlapping boxes to remove the overlap, and automatically creating a linked box group comprising the two adjacent boxes, and on a second pass through the row of boxes, moving the linked box group together should the linked box group overlap with an edge of the bay boundary, or overlap with another box in the row of boxes.

12. The method of claim 8, wherein the creating further comprises dividing the storage bay into multiple vertical sub-bays extending above a lower row of boxes in the mapping of boxes, each vertical sub-bay having at least one edge aligned to an edge of a box in the lower row of boxes, and repeating the automatically reorienting and the automatically repositioning for boxes in each vertical sub-bay of the multiple vertical sub-bays in a next row of boxes in the mapping of boxes.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein adjacent boxes in the lower row of boxes in the mapping of boxes with a same height are part of a same vertical sub-bay of the multiple vertical sub-bays.

14. The method of claim 1, further comprising displaying the mapping of boxes to a user and allowing the user to make adjustments to the mapping of boxes.