US Patent Issued to Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Toyota Jidosha on Sept. 1 for "Contracting member position control and/or state monitoring" (Michigan Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 1 -- United States Patent no. 12,722,536, issued on Sept. 1, was assigned to Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America Inc. (Plano, Texas) and Toyota Jidosha K.K. (Toyota, Japan).

"Contracting member position control and/or state monitoring" was invented by Xintong Deng (Plymouth, Mich.), Yufei Zhu (Ypsilanti, Mich.), Michael Paul Rowe (Pinckney, Mich.) and Erin Rutledge (Tipton, Mich.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A state of a contracting member (e.g., a shape memory material member) in an actuator can be monitored. When activated, the actuator can be configured to morph into an activated configuration in which a dimension of the actuator increases. A sen...