ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 2 -- United States Patent no. 12,642,409, issued on June 2, was assigned to NANTONG UNIVERSITY (Nantong, China).

"Stair cleaning robot based on retractable rotating arms" was invented by Lei Zhang (Nantong, China), Jiangen Shao (Nantong, China), Lei Su (Nantong, China), Haitao Liu (Nantong, China), Yu Liu (Nantong, China), Xingtian Yao (Nantong, China) and Lijuan Dai (Nantong, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A stair cleaning robot based on retractable rotational arms, including a cleaning robot body, wherein the cleaning robot body includes a machine body, a control system disposed at the top of the machine body, and a cleaning mechanism disposed at the bottom of th...