ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,296,759, issued on May 13, was assigned to Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America Inc. (Plano, Texas) and Toyota Jidosha K.K. (Toyota, Japan).

"Headliner impact system" was invented by Phouvadol P. Khouphongsy (Saline, Mich.), Umesh N. Gandhi (Farmington Hills, Mich.), Danil V. Prokhorov (Canton, Mich.), Yuyang Song (Ann Arbor, Mich.) and Mizuho Takayama (Ann Arbor, Mich.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Systems, methods, and other embodiments described herein relate to vehicle headliners. In one embodiment, a method includes detecting, with a controller connected to a first impact feature of a headliner of a vehicle, a phy...