US Patent Issued to Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Toyota Jidosha on March 4 for "Sound absorbing devices and acoustic resonators decorated with fabric" (Michigan Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,243,506, issued on March 4, was assigned to Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America Inc. (Plano, Texas) and Toyota Jidosha K.K. (Toyota, Japan).

"Sound absorbing devices and acoustic resonators decorated with fabric" was invented by Yuyang Song (Ann Arbor, Mich.) and Taehwa Lee (Ann Arbor, Mich.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A sound absorbing device includes an acoustic resonator with an opening and at least one fabric layer extending across the opening. The at least one fabric layer includes reversible actuatable liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) fibers such that an average pore size of the at least one fabric layer increas...