ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,686,246, issued on July 21, was assigned to Caterpillar Inc. (Peoria, Ill.).

"System and method for regulating environment within operator cabin of machine" was invented by Elakhya Nedumaran (Chennai, India), Liang Fan (Wuxi, China), Jiawei Sheng (Wuxi, China), Tao Meng (Wuxi, China), Bahman Gozloo (Peoria, Ill.), Dennis Lee Kroeger (Washington, Ill.), Weixiu Wang (Wuxi, China), Yosabath Samraj M (Sholinganallur, India) and Thanjavur Nagarajan Sriraam (Thanjavur, India).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A system for regulating an environment within an operator cabin of a machine via a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system ...