ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 28 -- United States Patent no. 12,534,186, issued on Jan. 27, was assigned to Textron Innovations Inc. (Providence, R.I.).
"Fold-lock and pitch-lock systems" was invented by Kyle Cravener (Arlington, Texas), Andrew Harloff (Fort Worth, Texas), Lancer Drake Halcom (Coppell, Texas) and Andrew Maresh (Colleyville, Texas).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A rotor-blade assembly has a lock system to enable and disable a folding degree of freedom and a pitching degree of freedom of a rotor blade. A grip couples a blade to a hub, the blade being pivotable about a fold axis relative to the grip, the blade and grip being pivotable together about a pitch axis relative to the hub. A fo...