US Patent Issued to GM GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY OPERATIONS on July 21 for "Smart temperature-controlled beverage cupholder" (Michigan Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,686,316, issued on July 21, was assigned to GM GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY OPERATIONS LLC (Detroit).

"Smart temperature-controlled beverage cupholder" was invented by Alok Anand (Troy, Mich.), Kevin W. Owens (Sterling Heights, Mich.), Cleavon Allen Tomlinson (Southfield, Mich.) and Bilal Sakbani (Ferndale, Mich.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A cupholder temperature control system including a pressure sensor for detecting an object within a cupholder, a temperature sensor for detecting a current object temperature of the object, an optical sensor for capturing an image of the object, a processor to perform an image recognition algorithm to detect ...