ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,617,434, issued on May 5, was assigned to Toyota Jidosha K.K. (Toyota, Japan).
"Unintentional control re-engagement prevention" was invented by Yiting Liu (Dublin, Calif.), Hirofumi Yamamoto (Cupertino, Calif.) and Chen Bao (Newark, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Systems, methods, and other embodiments described herein relate to preventing accidentally or unintentionally re-engaging a vehicle control system after recently dis-engaging the vehicle control system. In one embodiment, a method includes, in response to a vehicle control system being disengaged, activating a lockout period, and preventing the vehicle control system from r...