ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,310,548, issued on May 27, was assigned to Vorwerk & Co. Interholding GmbH (Wuppertal, Germany).

"Cleaning system comprising a base unit and at least one accessory device" was invented by Frederic Hahn (Langenfeld, Germany), Richard Hellwig (Nordkirchen, Germany) and Artur Gaida (Burscheid, Germany).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A cleaning system has a base unit and a separably connected accessory device. The base unit has a detection device for detecting the type of accessory device connected to the base unit, a base memory and a control device for controlling an operating activity of the base unit and/or the accessory device depending ...