Vending machine inventory system and method
Number of patents in Portfolio can not be more than 2000
United States of America Patent
Stats
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Feb 24, 2004
Grant Date -
Mar 27, 2003
app pub date -
Sep 26, 2001
filing date -
Sep 26, 2001
priority date (Note) -
Expired
status (Latency Note)
Importance
Abstract
A vending machine containing one or more racks that contain stacked products to be vended to customers. An array of capacitive switches or capacitive switches are aligned on one or more racks. The capacitive switches are each aligned with the height of a product to be vended. A controller coupled to the array of capacitive switches senses the presence or lack thereof of a product in the rack, and correlates this presence or absence to a height and/or inventory count of products in the racks. The vending machine, using the controller and communication electronics, may communicate the height and/or inventory count of products in the racks to a device located outside of the vending machine, such as a hand-held computing device and/or a management system, over a communication link.
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