ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 25 -- United States Patent no. 12,340,696, issued on June 24, was assigned to TOYOTA JIDOSHA K.K. (Toyota, Japan).
"Platooning system" was invented by Koichi Okuda (Toyota, Japan), Masafumi Yamamoto (Nagakute, Japan), Yoshito Sekiguchi (Kariya, Japan), Yuuki Makino (Aichi-gun, Japan) and Atsushi Tabata (Okazaki, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A platooning system executes automatic follow-up running in line with a predetermined intervehicle distance between adjacent vehicles from a leading vehicle, the platoon participating vehicles each comprising a driving force source, an automatic transmission capable of shifting to a plurality of gear stages each having a diffe...