US Patent Issued to Covidien on Sept. 30 for "Robotic surgical assemblies" (Massachusetts, Connecticut Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 30 -- United States Patent no. 12,426,970, issued on Sept. 30, was assigned to Covidien LP (Mansfield, Mass.).

"Robotic surgical assemblies" was invented by Chi Min Seow (Watertown, Mass.), Michael A. Zemlok (Prospect, Conn.), Mark H. MacLeod (Brookfield, Conn.), Ranjan K. Mishra (Orange, Conn.) and Eric J. Taylor (Southington, Conn.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A surgical robotic assembly includes an instrument drive unit including a housing defining a longitudinal channel, a plurality of motors for performing functions of a surgical instrument, and a designated motor for rotating the instrument drive unit and the surgical instrument when the surgical instrument is a...