Moving physical objects from original physical site to user-specified locations at destination physical site

• US 20100010783A1
• Filed: 07/13/2008
• Published: 01/14/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 07/13/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Correl, Stephen F., McKenney, Paul E., Yardley, Brent W., Satyanarayana, Pradeep, Velarde, Debora
• Granted Patent: US 8,380,464 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 703/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/08 Logistics, e.g. warehousing, loading or distribution; Inventory or stock management

Abstract

Dimensions of each physical object to be moved from an original physical site to a destination physical site are at least approximately determined. Each physical object is tagged with an identifier. A virtual layout of the destination physical site and the dimensions and the identifier of each physical object are input into a computer program. A user-specified location of where within the destination physical site each physical object is to be placed when moved to the destination physical site is input using the computer program, based on the virtual layout of the destination physical site and the dimensions and the identifier of each physical object. At the destination physical site, each physical object is looked up using the identifier of the physical object to determine the user-specified location of where to place the physical object within the destination physical site.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

at least approximately determining dimensions of each physical object of a plurality of physical objects to be moved from an original physical site to a destination physical site;

tagging each physical object with an identifier;

inputting a virtual layout of the destination physical site and the dimensions and the identifier of each physical object into a computer program;

for each physical object, inputting a user-specified location of where within the destination physical site the physical object is to be placed when moved to the destination physical site, based on the virtual layout of the destination physical site and the dimensions and the identifier of each physical object, using the computer program; and

,

at the destination physical site, looking up each physical object using the identifier of the physical object to determine the user-specified location of where to place the physical object within the destination physical site.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein at least approximately determining the dimensions of each physical object comprises using a three-dimensional scanner to approximately determine the dimensions of the physical object without a user having to manually measure the dimensions of the physical object.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein tagging each physical object with the identifier comprises attaching a radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag, the RFID tag emitting a radio signal corresponding to the identifier of the physical object.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein inputting the virtual layout of the destination physical site into the computer program comprises specifying a computer-aided design (CAD) file of the destination physical site for reading by the computer program.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein inputting the dimensions and the identifier of each physical object into the computer program comprises:

at the original physical site, inputting the dimensions and the identifier of each physical object into a handheld electronic device; and

,

transmitting the dimensions and the identifier of each physical object from the handheld electronic device to the computer program.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein, for each physical object, inputting the user-specified location of where within the destination physical site the physical object is to be placed when moved to the destination physical site comprises a user interacting with a virtual worlds environment using a first computing device communicating over a network with a second computing device on which the computer program is running.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein, at the destination physical site, looking up each physical object using the identifier of the physical object to determine the user-specified location of where to place the physical object within the destination physical site comprises, for each physical object:

inputting the identifier of the physical object into a handheld electronic device;

looking up the user-specified location of where to place the physical object within the destination physical site by the handheld electronic device, using the identifier of the physical object; and

,

displaying the user-specified location of where to place the physical object within the destination physical site by the handheld electronic device.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising, at the destination physical site, after looking up each physical object to determine the user-specified location of where to place the physical object within the destination physical site, placing the physical object at the user-specified location within the destination physical site.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising verifying that all the physical objects have been correctly placed at the user-specified locations for the physical objects within the destination physical site.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein verifying that all the physical objects have been correctly placed at the user-specified locations for the physical objects within the destination physical site comprises:

determining a current location of a user of a handheld electronic device within the destination physical site by using global-positioning system (GPS) capabilities of the handheld electronic device;

inputting the identifier of each physical object placed at the current location of the user into the handheld electronic device to yield a collection of one or more physical objects placed at the current location;

determining by the handheld electronic device that the user-specified location of each physical object within the collection matches the current location of the user; and

,

where the user-specified location of any physical object of the collection does not match the current location of the user, alerting the user by the handheld electronic device.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising verifying that all the physical objects have been moved from the original physical site to the destination physical site.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein verifying that all the physical objects have been moved from the original physical site to the destination physical site comprises:

inputting the identifier of each physical object that has been moved to the destination physical site into a handheld electronic device to yield a collection of identifiers of one or more objects that have been moved to the destination physical site;

for each physical object that was previously tagged with an identifier, determining by handheld electronic device whether the identifier of the physical object is within the collection; and

,

where the identifier of any physical object is not within the collection, alerting the user by the handheld electronic device.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising optimizing an order in which the physical objects are to be loaded into a physical transporter for moving the physical objects from the original physical site to the destination physical site based on one or more of:

the dimensions of each physical object; and

,

the user-specified location of where within the destination physical site each physical object is to be placed.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein optimizing the order in which the physical objects are to be loaded into the physical transporter at least substantially satisfies one or more constraints, the constraints comprising one or more of:

the physical objects compactly and/or economically fitting into the physical transporter; and

,

the physical objects being unloaded from the physical transporter at the destination physical site so that the physical objects to be placed at user-specified locations farther away from an entry point at the destination physical site are unloaded before the physical objects to be placed at user-specified locations closer to the entry point.

15. A system comprising:

hardware;

one or more components implemented at least within the hardware, to;

receive a virtual layout of a destination physical site to which a plurality of physical objects are to be moved from an original physical site;

receive dimensions and an identifier of each physical object; and

,

permit a user to input a user-specified location of where within the destination physical site each physical object is to be placed when moved to the destination physical site, based on the virtual layout of the destination physical site and the dimensions and the identifiers of the physical objects.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the components are further to optimize an order in which the physical objects are to be loaded into a physical transporter for moving the physical objects from the original physical site to the destination physical site based one or more of the dimensions of each physical object and the user-specified location of where within the destination physical site each physical object is to be placed, to at least substantially satisfy one or more constraints, the constraints comprising one or more of:

the physical objects compactly fitting into the physical transporter;

the physical objects being unloaded from the physical transporter at the destination physical site so that the physical objects to be placed at user-specified locations farther away from an entry point at the destination physical site are unloaded before the physical objects to be placed at user-specified locations closer to the entry point; and

,

the physical objects being loaded into the physical transporter at the original physical site so that the physical objects located at the original physical site closer to an exit point at the original physical site are loaded before the physical objects located at the original physical site farther away from the exit point.

17. The system of claim 15, further comprising a communications mechanism to electronically communicate with a handheld electronic device, the handheld electronic device used at the original physical site to input the dimensions and the identifier of each physical object and used at the destination physical site to determine the user-specified location to determine the user-specified location of where to place each physical object within the destination physical site by looking up the identifier of the physical object.

18. A handheld electronic device comprising:

an input mechanism to input dimensions and an identifier of each physical object of a plurality of physical objects to be moved from an original physical site to a destination physical site;

a communications mechanism to electronically communicate the dimensions and the identifier to a system, the system to permit a user to input a user-specified location of where within the destination physical site each physical object is to be placed when moved to the destination physical site, based on a virtual layout of the destination physical site and on the dimensions and the identifiers of the physical objects; and

,

a display mechanism to display the user-specified location of where to place each physical object within the destination physical site after the handheld electronic device has looked up the physical object using the identifier of the physical object to determine the user-specified location.

19. The handheld electronic device of claim 18, wherein the input mechanism comprises one or more of:

a three-dimensional scanning mechanism to approximately determine the dimensions of each physical object without a user of the handheld electronic device having to manually measure the dimensions of the physical object; and

,

a tagging mechanism to receive the identifier of each physical object without the user of the handheld electronic device having to manually type in the identifier of the physical object,

wherein each physical object is tagged with one of;

a radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag, the RFID tag emitting a radio signal corresponding to the identifier of the physical object; and

,

an optically scannable bar code, the bar code encoding the identifier of the physical object.

20. The handheld electronic device of claim 18, further comprising a global-positioning system (GPS) mechanism to determine a current location of a user of the handheld electronic device within the destination physical site,

wherein the identifier of each physical object placed at the current location of the user is input into the handheld electronic device to yield a collection of one or more physical objects placed at the current location, the handheld electronic device to verify that the user-specified location of each physical object within the collection matches the current location of the user.