ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,307,393, issued on May 20, was assigned to Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. (Kanagawa, Japan) and Renault SAS (Boulogne-Billancourt, France).

"Vehicle travel assistance device, vehicle travel assistance system, and vehicle travel assistance method" was invented by Masahide Nakamura (Kanagawa, Japan), Yutaka Mikuriya (Kanagawa, Japan), Masaki Watanabe (Kanagawa, Japan), Narihiro Akari (Kanagawa, Japan), Xiaoxiao Fei (Kanagawa, Japan) and Kotaro Chiba (Kanagawa, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present invention provides a travel assistance device (1) for a vehicle, a travel assistance system (S) for a vehicle, and a travel assistance method ...