Tray Shuttle
A multi-axis grocery inventory management tool
Affiliation:
Fulfil Solutions Co-op
Role:
Time Range:
Mechanical Design Engineer
2021
Skills:
Mechanical Design, CAD (Solidworks), Complex Design, Machining, Sheet Metal, Multi-Axis Design, Rack and Pinion, Chain Drive, Industrial Automation, Gearing, Motors, Belts, Wheel/Track Motion, High Speed Motion, Technical Drawing, Object Manipulation
Background:
This was one of the main projects I owned while co-oping at fulfil solutions, a small grocery automation company that was in stealth mode at the time. Due to their small size I was lucky to recieve outsized responsibility and ownership for a 19-year-old co-op. The iteration of their system at the time included vertical stacks of custom shelves with trays. The system could retrieve trays from the stacks and dispense items from them, but they could not yet exchange trays between stacks. A senior engineer and I were tasked with developing the system to exchange trays between stacks, which involved multiple interesting custom axes to interact with the tray systems and travel between vertical stacks. This project was dubbed "tray shuttle".
Images:
My Contributions:
• Designed two unique automation axes on a "tray shuttle" to retrieve and deploy trays to shelving units
• Designed rack and pinion based axis to bring hook retrieval system to trays
• Designed chain and sprocket based system to hook and pull trays onto the tray shuttle
• Helped design the tray shuttle chassis and actuation for each of the axes
• Created documentation in preparation to hand off the design after the completion of my co-op
Outcomes:
This project has since been deployed at Fulfil's flagship grocery automation facility in Mountain View, CA. I have seen videos that show the complex system functioning flawlessly. The system is shown in the first clip of the video on Fulfil's homepage.