US Patent Issued to The Boeing on July 29 for "Manufacturing systems and methods for shaping and assembling flexible structures" (Washington, California, South Carolina Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 30 -- United States Patent no. 12,371,190, issued on July 29, was assigned to The Boeing Co. (Arlington, Va.).

"Manufacturing systems and methods for shaping and assembling flexible structures" was invented by Branko Lakic (Kirkland, Wash.), Monica Tatar (Bothell, Wash.), Jeffrey H. Hunt (Thousand Oaks, Calif.), Nicholas A. Norman (Summerville, S.C.) and Christopher A. Greer (Greenwood, S.C.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A manufacturing system includes a holding structure and actuators that are coupled to the holding structure. The actuators support the component and apply displacements to select locations of the component to change a current shape of the component towa...