US Patent Issued to TDK on Oct. 28 for "Smart wheel energy harvester" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 28 -- United States Patent no. 12,456,935, issued on Oct. 28, was assigned to TDK Corp. (Tokyo).

"Smart wheel energy harvester" was invented by Ryan Griswold (Los Gatos, Calif.), John Sze (Saratoga, Calif.) and Vibhu Vivek (Santa Clara, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Systems and methods for an energy harvester coupled to a rotatable component of a vehicle are disclosed. In some embodiments, an energy harvester system includes at least one energy harvesting component configured to be attached to a wheel of a vehicle, wherein the at least one energy harvesting component includes a piezoelectric component configured to be directly attached to a staging surface of the...