Evaluation of Developments in Vehicle Active Suspension Actuators and Control Systems Based on Patent Information Analysis Approach

Patent information is the term given to the technical and legal information that can be found in patent documents. Using patent information can help make informed decisions when choosing strategies for researching or developing new products. Patent information can be used to find out what already exists and build on it, find technology and market trends as early as possible, and avoid infringing patent rights of competitors. In this paper, the developments in actuators and control systems used in vehicle active suspensions are investigated based on the statistics obtained from the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) scheme. This patent information-based study can be repeated for any technology or product.