ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,378,084, issued on Aug. 5, was assigned to Murata Machinery Ltd. (Kyoto, Japan).
"Tire transport apparatus" was invented by Hiroya Kitanishi (Tokyo), Hidenori Yamagishi (Tokyo) and Tomohiro Aoi (Inuyama, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A tire transport apparatus includes at least three arms each having an arm main body and a protrusion disposed to protrude outward at a lower part of the arm main body to lift the tire, an arm extension/retraction mechanism configured to move the at least three arms in a horizontal extension/retraction direction, a lift mechanism configured to raise and lower the at least three arms, at least three opt...