| 摘要 |
A material handling apparatus including two or more vertical storage towers aligned along a process path. Each of the two or more vertical storage towers includes a set of movable storage shelves coupled to define an endless loop that may be rotated bi-directionally along a vertical storage path. Each shelf may be positioned relative one or more input position associated with a horizontal input path and one or more article output position associated with a horizontal output path. One or more articles may be stored on any available shelf. Any stored article may be retrieved from any shelf, in any order, providing for random access of any article. The apparatus operates asynchronously to bi-directionally rotate each set of shelves independently of other sets of shelves and independently of the horizontal input and output paths. The material handling apparatus may be configured in modules, and may be expanded in modular increments.
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