US Patent Issued to Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Toyota Jidosha on March 4 for "Actuator with contracting member" (Michigan, Texas Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,241,458, issued on March 4, was assigned to Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America Inc. (Plano, Texas) and Toyota Jidosha K.K. (Toyota, Japan).

"Actuator with contracting member" was invented by Michael Paul Rowe (Pinckney, Mich.), Brian J. Pinkelman (Ann Arbor, Mich.), Yufei Zhu (Ypsilanti, Mich.) and Frederick William Mau II (McKinney, Texas).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An actuator can include an outer body. At least a portion of the outer body can be configured to pivot. The actuator can include a contracting member, such as a shape memory material member. When an activation input is provided to the contracting membe...