ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 11 -- United States Patent no. 12,546,960, issued on Feb. 10, was assigned to DENSO Corp. (Kariya, Japan), TOYOTA JIDOSHA K.K. (Toyota, Japan) and MIRISE Technologies Corp. (Nisshin, Japan).
"Optical device" was invented by Masatoshi Tsuji (Nisshin, Japan), Hiroshi Ando (Nisshin, Japan) and Kazuyuki Ishihara (Nisshin, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An optical device includes a light guide and a light shielding portion. The light guide has: an incident surface on which an external scene light coming from a blind area is incident; a first surface including flat portions and prism portions; and a second surface opposite to the flat portions. The light shielding portio...