ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 11 -- United States Patent no. 12,545,294, issued on Feb. 10, was assigned to TORC ROBOTICS INC. (Blacksburg, Va.).
"Passing vehicle on shoulder" was invented by Joshua Petrin (Blacksburg, Va.), Garrett Madsen (Blacksburg, Va.), Haseeb Chaudhry (Blacksburg, Va.), Andrew Cunningham (Blacksburg, Va.), John Blankenhorn (Blacksburg, Va.), Paul Brown (Blacksburg, Va.), William Davis (Blacksburg, Va.), Kiron Mateti (Blacksburg, Va.) and Robert Kriener (Blacksburg, Va.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method of passing an object on the side of the road by receiving a first signal from a first sensor configured to detect a presence of the object positioned on a shoulder of a roa...