ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,377,979, issued on Aug. 5, was assigned to SHANDONG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (Qingdao, China).

"Unmanned food delivery device in cabin and application method thereof" was invented by Shun Jia (Qingdao, China), Shang Wang (Qingdao, China), Na Zhang (Qingdao, China), Tianyou Hou (Qingdao, China), Bo Yang (Qingdao, China), Yang Liu (Qingdao, China), Xiaoming Jie (Qingdao, China), Hong Chen (Qingdao, China), Xiangpeng Min (Qingdao, China), Le Ma (Qingdao, China), Yang Yang (Qingdao, China), Shengshuai Su (Qingdao, China) and Jingyan Zhang (Qingdao, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Disclosed is an unmanned food delivery device ...