ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 23 -- United States Patent no. 12,365,342, issued on July 22, was assigned to AISIN Corp. (Aichi, Japan).

"Drive assistance device and computer program" was invented by Mitsuhiro Nimura (Kariya, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Provided is a drive assistance device preventing an unrecommended lane when a vehicle travels, enabling appropriate provision of driving assistance. Specifically, candidates for a way of moving into a selectable lane when the vehicle moves along a planned travel route are identified and obtained by using map information. Then, for a candidate that involves a lane change among the obtained candidates for a way of moving into a lane, a lane chan...