ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,311,839, issued on May 27, was assigned to HORIZON GLOBAL AMERICAS INC. (Plymouth, Mich.).
"Lighting state detection for a vehicle trailer" was invented by Chandrakumar Kulkarni (Battle Creek, Mich.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A towing vehicle includes a towing control unit with circuitry to detect whether a light is connected to the electrical harness electrically coupling the vehicle to the trailer. The towing control unit may include lamp connectivity circuits for, for example, the left turn signal and the right turn signal. To determine whether the turn light is connected, the corresponding connectivity circuit periodically genera...