Boosting Patents During the Pandemic

Nissan’s North American researchers set a company record for patent output during the pandemic's first year. Two teams reveal how they kept IP on track.

Patents are proudly and comprehensively displayed in Nissan's Michigan tech center lobby. (Nissan)

Faced with more than a year of lockdown restrictions during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, mobility-industry engineers and scientists recognized that project deadlines, in most cases, were not going to change. So, they had to get clever and bold to complete their work on schedule. Those charged with developing and testing large physical objects sometimes had to resort to rather extreme measures – such as ferreting large components out of the companies’ tech centers and into engineers’ private garages.

Cenk Gumeci’s SOFC patent was enabled by a “one team” philosophy across Nissan’s technology pillars. (Cenk Gumeci)

The workarounds, clandestine or not, were of course aided by new communication, meeting and networking tools such as Zoom, Slack and Microsoft Teams. Remarkably, as vaccinations rolled out and North American industry began to reopen, the rate of work accomplished was impressively high. A September 2020 study by consulting firm Mercer found that 94% of employers across all business sectors said productivity was as high or even higher following the rapid shift to remote work.

At Nissan North America (NNA), the company’s future technologies appear to have benefited from the new-age work environment. “It looks like we may set a record in the number of patents filed over this period,” Chris Reed, the senior VP of Research & Development told SAE Media in March 2021. He praised the dedication of Nissan engineers despite myriad impediments, including restricted access to the company’s expansive NTCNA technical center in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

How was Nissan’s increased throughput of intellectual property achieved? By being flexible, explained NNA IP manager Matthew Clark. “When the pandemic started, we didn’t know how that was going to impact our patent activity,” he shared. “And in the early days and weeks, we did see a decrease in patent activity as people were suddenly working from home.”

Clark noted that the research teams, working on advanced propulsion and energy storage, material technologies and automated and autonomous driving systems, quickly adapted to the new work scenario. “We ended up getting a record number of invention submissions from our research groups (including the battery and fuel cell lab at NTCNA and our Alliance Innovation — Silicon Valley lab). This ended up allowing us to achieve our strong results by year end.” He said the company’s patent group also adapted quickly and “found new ways to have conversations about new research and where to focus our patent activity. We managed to make it work.”

What, no whiteboard?

Chris Ostafew: Use of a simulator built in-house enabled AV researchers to “keep going” on work. (Chris Ostafew)

To gather their insights into how they solved the remote-work challenge, SAE Media spoke with NNA research teams whose patents in two areas – solid-oxide fuel cells (SOFC) and autonomous vehicles – were granted during the pandemic. U.S. Patent #10,637,070 B2 is for new, highly porous anode catalyst layer structures for fuel-flexible Solid Oxide Fuel Cells. SOFCs operate at temperatures ranging from 5,000 to 10,000°C (9,032 to 18,032 °F), requiring a new approach to thermal stability of their anode when faced with contaminated fuel. Cenk Gumeci, a researcher in fuel cell/zero emissions at NTCNA, was the patent’s author.

U.S. Patent 10,698,407 B2 is for a trajectory planning technology for autonomous vehicles. It is part of a larger body of research that the patent’s author, principal researcher Chris Ostafew, and his team have been doing with autonomous vehicles at the Alliance’s Silicon Valley lab.

Gumeci’s SOFC patent was achieved “through high levels of support and motivation,” asserted Dianne Atienza, manager of NTCNA’s Battery Materials Research, speaking for Gumeci who was traveling during the SAE interview. “Our group works with a ‘one team’ philosophy across our technology pillars and we have great respect for who first creates an idea. And our patent engineer James Morgan is very supportive but also very critical in analyzing our patent, to make it stronger.”

According to Atienza, the lockdown did not present major impediments to moving the SOFC patent forward. “The networking technology, for example Zoom, makes it easy to communicate,” she noted. “Our team and Nissan’s patent department really worked hard to make this attainable.”

Nissan’s patent department has an activity called Inventshop. During normal times it takes place in one room where engineers and researchers brainstorm ideas and map their collaboration. Such physical contacts didn’t happen during the COVID lockdown, Atienza said, “so we designed a Zoom meeting for this purpose. Added Morgan: “We had very good results moving Inventshop into Zoom, but it took some creativity to try to replicate a physical meeting.”

For a team of research Ph.Ds, lack of access to a whiteboard in any space can be an issue. Zoom does not currently have a tool to substitute for a whiteboard. “That was a limitation for sure,” Atienza noted. So were limitations on use of Nissan’s laboratories.

“Cenk spent some time in the lab during the pandemic and was able to perform some experiments, which helped his creativity for his patents,” Morgan recalled. NTCNA restricted its lab use to two people working at a time, with numerous safety and medical guidelines in place. “To do our experimentation, we had to be in the lab; it’s not work we can do at home,” he said.

Shifting to sim

Nissan battery expert Dianne Atienza. (Dianne Atienza)
Intellectual property group manager Matt Clark: “When the pandemic started, we didn’t know how that was going to impact our patent activity.” (Matthew Clark)

The SOFC researchers realized many learnings from their experience in developing the patent remotely. Some of the takeaways were positive. “From the patent side the lockdown experience allowed us to streamline some of our patent processes,” said Clark. “We were able to condense some of our typical outside meetings into Zoom calls. Working remotely streamlined our process in ways that may not change as things begin to reopen.”

When the pandemic hit and Nissan engineers began scrambling out of the Michigan and Silicon Valley offices, Chris Ostafew realized one day just how many options were available for remote communication. “At first on my desktop I had the following open: iMessage, Text, Slack, Skype, Zoom, Teams, LinkedIn and at least two more,” he said. “We all ended up on Zoom for videoconferencing and Slack for messaging. Outside of North America, the Alliance organization uses Microsoft Teams.”

AV technology researcher Ostafew earned his Ph.D in learning-based control for autonomous robots. He collaborates principally with YM0, Nissan Japan’s Mobility and AI Laboratory. Based on his Ph.D work, he was asked to develop a trajectory planner, an AV technology that takes information from the vehicle’s route planner – decisions involving when to stop, go, turn, merge, etc. – and turns it into a detailed plan trajectory, which is the body of his patent. The trajectory planner algorithm gets handed off to the system’s “reactive layer,” which monitors the driving situation significantly faster than the trajectory planner. It constantly looks for changes and deviations to that plan.

“So, if a vehicle cuts in ahead of you unpredicted, or something comes out of occlusion that modifies the plan, the reactive layer then modifies the piece,” Ostafew explained. The trajectory planner is the base layer, needed to handle static objects, moving objects, and other components. The team is now focused on integrating the ‘world model’. Its role, Ostafew said, is “detecting other road users and making predictions about what another vehicle or object is going to do, so our planner can integrate that information.”

Ostafew voiced frustration about some current driver assistance systems that are imprecise and unreliable. “Ideas I have for the trajectory planner are guided by the notion that you shouldn’t keep making the same mistake,” he asserted.

A significant workaround that benefited his patent work during the lockdown was having access to a simulator, developed in-house for a previous project. It was on the shelf and came in handy when lockdown arrived, and the AV road-test fleet became unavailable.

“When COVID hit in February 2020, everybody scrambled to work at home – but we were able to use the simulator for free, without licenses,” Ostafew said. “So compared to our group at YM0 in Japan, we were able to keep developing using the simulations for the algorithms we were working on. Our managers were surprised at how far along we were, and how fast we were moving in simulation.”

After their experiences during the pandemic, the Nissan technology experts are looking forward to being able to work together again in person, “to walk around the building and see what the engineers are working on. It helps us in finding where to look to identify patentable ideas,” said Ostafew. Clark agreed, noting the value of “meeting with our researchers face-to-face and really seeing the new technology up close again.”