ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 30 -- United States Patent no. 12,431,016, issued on Sept. 30, was assigned to STC Inc. (McLeansboro, Ill.).
"Systems and methods for pacing a mass transit vehicle" was invented by Brad Cross (McLeansboro, Ill.) and Nick Freed (Thompsonville, Ill.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Systems and methods that allow use of simple priority VCUs (those that can only request an increased priority) to operate in a manner that simulates much more sophisticated schedule-adherence or ETA-type traffic control systems without the need to upgrade vehicle hardware. Instead, tracking of the vehicle, whether provided by other systems or by the VCU operating in conjunction with certain prepa...