INVENTORY TAKING SYSTEM FOR AN AUTOMATIC WAREHOUSE

A stacker crane is movable along horizontally spaced and vertically stacked bins to deposit and retrieve palletized loads comprised of stacked articles, at least some of which contain an inventory label. To take a physical inventory, an inventory pallet is carried on the transfer forks of the stacker crane. The inventory pallet contains a laser beam scanner which directs a scanning beam toward the rear of the palletized load. The stacker crane is automatically driven through a sequence which causes it to pass each bin in the warehouse. When the crane reverses direction, the laser beam scanner is driven along guides to an end location, and rotated 180.degree., to scan bins on the opposite side of the aisle. The scanned inventory data is remotely transmitted with the bin address data to an off-crane data recorder.