US Patent Issued to Southwest Research Institute on July 21 for "Parallelogram articulated lattice mast for passive (self) deployment" (Colorado, Utah Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,687,033, issued on July 21, was assigned to Southwest Research Institute (San Antonio).

"Parallelogram articulated lattice mast for passive (self) deployment" was invented by Thomas J. Rose (Erie, Colo.), Thomas J. Harvey (Nederland, Colo.), Toby J. Harvey (Enoch, Utah) and Randy J. Rose (Broomfield, Colo.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A self-deployable mast, typically for supporting a payload. The mast has top longerons, bottom longerons, and hinge linkages that form a series of moveable parallelograms operable to fold and unfold. The mast further has springs and truss diagonals, with at least one spring and one truss diagonal associat...