ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 14 -- United States Patent no. 12,680,698, issued on July 14, was assigned to BSH Hausgerate GmbH (Munich).
"Optical ascertainment of operating states of a cooktop" was invented by Gerald Horst (Karlsruhe, Germany), Frank Schaefer (Puchheim, Germany) and Daniel Vollmar (Pfinztal, Germany).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "In a method for optical ascertainment of an operating state of a cooktop, objects are optically detected within a detection space including the cooktop with at least two cooking zones and a control panel with at least two identifiers. The cooking zones and the identifiers are recognized based on optically detected properties of the objects. A centroid for e...