US Patent Issued to Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Toyota Jidosha on July 29 for "Trailer hitch assist system for a vehicle and associated methods" (Maryland, Michigan Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 30 -- United States Patent no. 12,371,021, issued on July 29, was assigned to Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America Inc. (Plano, Texas) and Toyota Jidosha K.K. (Toyota, Japan).

"Trailer hitch assist system for a vehicle and associated methods" was invented by Saijian Li (Bethesda, Md.), Nicholas E. Merkel (Canton, Mich.), Jose David Hernandez Cardenas (Ann Arbor, Mich.) and Tomoaki Iida (Ann Arbor, Mich.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "One embodiment of a trailer hitch assist system analyzes image data from a vehicle camera to detect a reference object on the ground in a first location and stores a first position, within the camera's field of view, of the...