ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,384,392, issued on Aug. 12, was assigned to Alps Alpine Co. Ltd. (Japan).
"Contact deciding apparatus" was invented by Shinichi Endo (Miyagi-ken, Japan) and Sho Taguchi (Miyagi-ken, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A contact deciding apparatus includes: reference signal creating units that create first and second reference signals, with a sine wave, that have the same frequency as a detection signal output from a sensor unit, and are respectively in phase with and out of phase with the detection signal; a demodulation circuit that creates first and second demodulation signals by multiplying the detection signal respectively by the fi...