US Patent Issued to Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Georgia Tech Research on May 13 for "Morphable body" (Michigan, Georgia Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,296,478, issued on May 13, was assigned to Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America Inc. (Plano, Texas) and Georgia Tech Research Corp. (Atlanta).

"Morphable body" was invented by Yuyang Song (Ann Arbor, Mich.), Masato Tanaka (Ann Arbor, Mich.), Mingzhe Li (Atlanta) and Hang Qi (Marietta, Ga.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A body can be configured to be selectively morphable. One or more body support members can be operatively connected to an outer surface of the body. The one or more body support members can be arranged in a pattern to define at least one morphing region. A contracting member (e.g., a shape memory polymer)...