ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 2 -- United States Patent no. 12,264,979, issued on April 1, was assigned to NATIONAL SUN YAT-SEN UNIVERSITY (Kaohsiung, Taiwan).

"Force sensing device and sensor and piezoelectric element thereof" was invented by Yu-Jen Wang (Kaohsiung, Taiwan), Yu-Jan Lo (Kaohsiung, Taiwan) and Ren-Yi Huang (Kaohsiung, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A force sensing device is mounted on a tool to sense force, particularly quasi-static and static forces. The force sensing device includes at least one a sensor. A piezoelectric element in the sensor includes a driving portion and a sensing portion. A first voltage is input to the driving portion to generate a vibration in the piezo...