US Patent Issued to Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Toyota Jidosha on April 8 for "Shape memory material member-based actuator" (Michigan Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,270,386, issued on April 8, was assigned to Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America Inc. (Plano, Texas) and Toyota Jidosha K.K. (Toyota, Japan).

"Shape memory material member-based actuator" was invented by Michael Paul Rowe (Pinckney, Mich.), Brian J. Pinkelman (Ann Arbor, Mich.) and Yufei Zhu (Ypsilanti, Mich.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An actuator can include one or more shape memory material members. When an activation input is provided to the one or more shape memory material members, the one or more shape memory material members contract, which causes the actuator to morph into an activated configuration. A heigh...