Eight employees of the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) were recognized at the Patent and Innovation Awards Luncheon recently, which was held at the Annenberg Presidential Conference Center at the George Bush Presidential Library.
Steve Roop, Leslie Olson and Curtis Morgan were honored for their patent, described simply as a freight transportation system and method. The Freight Shuttle is a revolutionary cargo-movement concept consisting of a series of specially designed transport vehicles that carry freight containers and truck trailers. The containers travel on an elevated guideway, propelled by electric linear induction motors.
Patent number 7,656,203 was issued to the trio and former TTI employee Craig Roco in February of last year.
Akram Abu-Odeh, Dean Alberson, Roger Bligh, Lance Bullard and Gene Buth were issued patent number 7,694,941 in April. It’s described as a guardrail safety system for dissipating energy to decelerate the impacting vehicle.
“This system is the first guardrail terminal to meet the new national standard, `Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware,’ also known as MASH,” Bullard explains. “It is a tension terminal that has the potential to withstand a second impact, which is different than current guardrail systems.” TTI is currently in discussion with Trinity Industries regarding a licensing agreement, which is the first step before production.
The Texas A&M University System Office of Technology Commercialization handed out a total of 24 Patent Awards to 40 A&M System employees this year.