ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 10 -- United States Patent no. 12,292,538, issued on May 6, was assigned to The First Institute of Oceanography, MNR (Qingdao, China) and Qingdao National Laboratory of Marine Science and Technology Development Center (Qingdao, China).

"Method and system for positioning and correcting visual data by seafloor topographic profiles" was invented by Shijuan Yan (Qingdao, China), Xinyu Shi (Qingdao, China), Chuanshun Li (Qingdao, China), Jun Ye (Qingdao, China), Gang Yang (Qingdao, China), Zhiwei Zhu (Qingdao, China), Yue Hao (Qingdao, China) and Dewen Du (Qingdao, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method and system for positioning and correcting visual data by seafloor ...