ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,315,382, issued on May 27, was assigned to The Boeing Co. (Arlington, Va.).

"Systems and methods for collecting and disseminating structure information from mounted smart lights" was invented by Umesh Hosamani (Bangalore, India) and Nisha Jalaja (Bangalore, India).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Disclosed herein is a collection and dissemination system and method for attain structure characteristics information directly from encoded light signals produced by lights mounted to structures. An exemplary aircraft includes a light receiver, a data communication device, a processor, and a memory device. The light receiver receives light from a l...