Methods and apparatus for load and route assignments in a delivery system

US10775182B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• Walmart Apollo, LLC · US

Inventors

• Mingang Fu · Palo Alto, US
• Pushkar Raj Pande · Bentonville, US
• Amritayan Nayak · Santa Clara, US
• Deepak Deshpande · San Jose, US
• Madhavan Kandhadai Vasantham · Dublin, US
• Syed Aman · Santa Clara, US
• Deyi Zhang · Fremont, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Sep 12, 2018
• Grant date: Sep 15, 2020
• Expiry date: Jan 31, 2039

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G01C21/3415
• WIPO field: Measurement
• WIPO sector: Instruments

Abstract

A load and route assignment system is provided and generally includes a computing device and a database. The database may store historical inbound load data and historical outbound load data related to previous inbound and outbound loads. The computing device can obtain and aggregate the historical inbound and outbound load data from the database, and determine an optimal path based on the aggregated historical data. The optimal path, along with load attribute data, may be stored in the database as a tour template for future load executions. The computing device may use the tour templates to determine future load assignments to vehicles. The computing device may also obtain real-time load requests, and match them to one or more of a plurality of tour templates. The computing device may assign the matched real-time load requests to a vehicle for execution in accordance with the corresponding load and tour template.