Wire-guidance apparatus
First Claim
1. In a wire-guidance system having a current-carrying guidewire providing an inductive field along portions of its length which defines paths for vehicles adapted to follow said field, at least one of said paths having plural destinations spaced along its length, two of said portions of said guidewire meeting to form an intersection, first controller means for controlling routing of a vehicle at said intersection, and means aboard said vehicle for applying a destination number signal to said controller means as said vehicle approaches said intersection, said destination number signal being coded to numerically represent a desired destination for said vehicle, said controller means including means for inequality comparing said destination number signal received from said vehicle with a first number stored in said controller to provide a first logic signal, and first switching means responsive to said first logic signal for controlling the routing of said vehicle at said intersection.
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Accused Products
Abstract
Routing decisions for vehicles following current-carrying guidewires and carrying destination addresses are made at intersections of a guidewire system without the need for storing large amounts of data at the intersections by making inequality and equality comparisons of destination addresses with one or a few numbers stored at each intersection and basing routing on the results of one or a combination of two such comparisons.
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Citations
18 Claims
- 1. In a wire-guidance system having a current-carrying guidewire providing an inductive field along portions of its length which defines paths for vehicles adapted to follow said field, at least one of said paths having plural destinations spaced along its length, two of said portions of said guidewire meeting to form an intersection, first controller means for controlling routing of a vehicle at said intersection, and means aboard said vehicle for applying a destination number signal to said controller means as said vehicle approaches said intersection, said destination number signal being coded to numerically represent a desired destination for said vehicle, said controller means including means for inequality comparing said destination number signal received from said vehicle with a first number stored in said controller to provide a first logic signal, and first switching means responsive to said first logic signal for controlling the routing of said vehicle at said intersection.
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16. In a wire-guidance system having a pair of energized guidewire sections having surrounding inductive fields defining a pair of intersecting paths having a plurality of destinations, a flux-cancelling loop operable upon energization to cancel portions of the fields along said sections and provide a path extending from one section to the other of said sections, and a controller operable to control energization of said flux-cancelling loop, said controller comprising means for receiving a coded digital signal representing a desired destination from a vehicle traversing one of said sections, means for making a first inequality comparison of said coded digital signal with a fist number stored in said controller to provide a first logic signal, and switching means responsive to said first logic signal for selectively energizing said flux-cancelling loop.
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17. The method of routing vehicles which follow paths defined by current-carrying guidewires at intersections along said paths, at least one of said paths having plural destinations spaced along its length, in which said vehicles transmit coded numerical signals representing desired respective destinations to turning controllers in said intersections which comprises the steps of:
- storing first numbers in said turning controllers at said intersections, inequality comparing said coded numerical signals with respective first numbers stored at said intersections to provide first logic signals, and selectively routing said vehicles at said intersections in accordance with said logic signals.
- View Dependent Claims (18)
Specification