ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,386,346, issued on Aug. 12, was assigned to TOYOTA JIDOSHA K.K. (Toyota, Japan).
"Support device" was invented by Masanori Shimizu (Toyota, Japan), Hideto Watanabe (Toyota, Japan), Tetsuo Hori (Toyota, Japan), Hiroyuki Tsukamoto (Toyota, Japan) and Tetsuya Yoshikawa (Toyota, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The technology disclosed in the present specification is embodied as a support device for supporting maintenance on an apparatus including an expendable component. The support device includes at least one computer. The at least one computer executes: a process of acquiring an index indicative of a consumption level of the expendab...