ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,668,320, issued on June 30, was assigned to Ricoh Co. Ltd. (Tokyo).
"Crawler type traveling body and traveling apparatus" was invented by Eichi Koizumi (Kanagawa, Japan), Hiroshi Shimura (Kanagawa, Japan), Ryota Yamashina (Kanagawa, Japan), Taku Kitahara (Tokyo) and Hiroshi Okamoto (Kanagawa, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A crawler type traveling body includes a drive wheel, an in-wheel motor incorporated in the drive wheel, a plurality of rotating wheels disposed below the drive wheel, a crawler, and a tensioner. The crawler is wound around the drive wheel and the rotating wheels and configured to be rotated by the drive wheel. T...