ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 25 -- United States Patent no. 12,337,468, issued on June 24, was assigned to NHK SPRING Co. LTD. (Kanagawa, Japan).
"Joint function unit" was invented by Takafumi Hirata (Kanagawa, Japan), Yuki Hotoda (Kanagawa, Japan) and Masahiro Inaba (Kanagawa, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A joint function unit, in which a movable part is supported by a base part so as to be displaceable in an axial direction thereof, includes: a plurality of drive wires each having a fixed part fixed to the movable part on one side in the axial direction and a supported part supported by the base part on the other side in the axial direction; and an elastic body supporting the supported par...