{
  "patent_number": "US 12343456",
  "country": "US",
  "title": "How Smart Air Conditioners Target and Disinfect High-Touch Surfaces",
  "original_title": "Disinfecting and virus inactivating device, air-conditioning apparatus including disinfecting and virus inactivating device thereon, and disinfection and virus inactivation method",
  "summary": "A system that uses infrared sensors to track where people touch furniture and then directs disinfecting air flows specifically to those high-contact spots.",
  "what_it_does": "This device tracks the movement of people in a room using infrared sensors to identify exactly which surfaces they touch. It classifies people into temperature zones, prioritizing disinfection for those in higher temperature zones, which might indicate higher activity or biological signatures. A transmission module, equipped with a motorized grille, then directs a stream of air containing a disinfecting substance directly onto these specific contact points. This ensures that the disinfection process is concentrated on high-traffic areas rather than wasting resources on the entire room.",
  "what_it_does_not_cover": [
    "Does not cover general room air purification that does not track specific contact points.",
    "Does not cover disinfection methods that rely on UV light rather than a transmitted substance.",
    "Does not cover systems that lack the ability to classify moving bodies by temperature zones.",
    "Does not cover manual disinfection processes performed by human operators."
  ],
  "filed": "2021-09-24",
  "granted": "2025-07-01",
  "expires": null,
  "status": "active",
  "holder": "Mitsubishi Electric Corp",
  "holder_url": "https://patentbrief.org/company/mitsubishi-electric-corp",
  "inventors": [
    {
      "name": "Koji Ota",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/koji-ota"
    },
    {
      "name": "Akinori Shimizu",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/akinori-shimizu"
    },
    {
      "name": "Seiro Yuge",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/seiro-yuge"
    },
    {
      "name": "Akane Nomura",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/akane-nomura"
    },
    {
      "name": "Yasuhiro Nakamura",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/yasuhiro-nakamura"
    }
  ],
  "times_cited": 0,
  "tags": [
    "consumer_electronics",
    "mechanical",
    "ai_ml"
  ],
  "abstract": "A disinfecting and virus inactivating device performs disinfection treatment or inactivation treatment in a target space that a moving body enters and exits. The disinfecting and virus inactivating device includes a locus detection module configured to detect a movement locus of locations where the moving body comes into contact with respective objects or respective portions of an object in the target space, a substance generating module configured to generate a particular substance for use in the disinfection treatment or the inactivation treatment, and a transmission module configured to generate an air flow and transmit the particular substance generated by the substance generating module to the movement locus.",
  "url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/12343456/raptor-vacuum",
  "markdown_url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/12343456/raptor-vacuum/md",
  "google_patents_url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US12343456",
  "relatedPatents": []
}