A Multi-Track Elevator system for E-commerce fulfillment centers

Abstract

Fulfillment centers located in densely populated urban areas are an ever-growing need for leading online consumer websites. These urban fulfillment centers have limited land mass and must have innovative solutions to transport goods within the available vertical space. This work presents a Multi-Track Elevator (MTE) System, a competitive solution for rapid access and retrieval of goods in high-rise e-commerce fulfillment centers and warehouses. The MTE System consists of multiple vertical rails connected with angular traverse rails that allow multiple carriages to go up and down without collision. A novel turning point system switches track routes so that several carriages can move across the multiple rails for rapidly accessing many floors and collecting diverse goods. Unlike existing vertical-horizontal grid elevators and rail systems, the roller-coaster type, self-powered carriages on the MTE system do not have to stop at switching points, but can continually move across the network of rails. Further, this work describes the architecture of the rail network system and techniques for switching multiple rails, followed by the design of vertical turntables for smooth, continuous rail switching. Finally, outlining the use of a simple route optimization algorithm, diverse elevator systems are compared with respect to total traveling time and distance. A proof-of-concept prototype has been built and is presented.