ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 24 -- United States Patent no. 12,558,918, issued on Feb. 24, was assigned to Honda Motor Co. Ltd. (Tokyo) and NIDEC DRIVE TECHNOLOGY Corp. (Kyoto, Japan).
"Wheel unit" was invented by Taihei Tsubone (Nagaokakyo, Japan), Wataru Yada (Tokyo), Tomokazu Sakamoto (Tokyo) and Shinichiro Kobashi (Tokyo).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A wheel assembly includes a wheel portion and a pair of drive assemblies opposing each other with the wheel portion interposed therebetween. One of the pair of drive assemblies includes a first motor and a first deceleration assembly. The other of the pair of drive assemblies includes a second motor and a second deceleration assembly. The first dec...