ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,378,829, issued on Aug. 5, was assigned to Canrig Robotic Technologies AS (Sandnes, Norway).
"Robotic pipe handler" was invented by Kjetil Naesgaard (Royneberg, Norway) and Kenneth Mikalsen (Sandnes, Norway).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A system includes a pipe handler with an arm and gripper configured to transport an object from a pickup location to a delivery location, and a horizontal storage area with an intermediate storage location, where the object is substantially parallel with the intermediate storage location when its positioned in the intermediate storage location, and the gripper is configured to rotate the object in the int...