ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,685,424, issued on July 21, was assigned to Positec Power Tools (Suzhou) Co. LTD. (Suzhou, China).

"Base station, and robot cleaning system and control method therefor" was invented by Yue Zheng (Jiangsu, China), Jianqiang Xu (Jiangsu, China), Shisong Zhang (Jiangsu, China), Hongfeng Zhong (Jiangsu, China) and Yimin Sun (Jiangsu, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present invention relates to a base station for a cleaning robot to park in, where the cleaning robot includes a wiping board, and a flexible wiping member replaceably butts the wiping board to form a wiping surface to wipe a working surface on which the cleaning robot wa...