ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,304,578, issued on May 20, was assigned to VOLVO TRUCK Corp. (Gothenburg, Sweden).
"Fifth wheel control arrangements for articulated vehicles" was invented by Richard Soder (Nodinge, Sweden), Lars Johansson (Satila, Sweden) and Olof Johansson (Halanda, Sweden).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A fifth wheel control arrangement (100) for an articulated vehicle comprising a fifth wheel having a biased hinge joint and an actuator (115) arranged to control a biasing force and/or a damping force of the biased hinge joint. The control arrangement comprises a control unit configured to automatically control the actuator in response to one or more i...