US Patent Issued to Intuitive Surgical Operations on June 17 for "Cable length conserving medical instrument" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,329,472, issued on June 17, was assigned to Intuitive Surgical Operations Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.).

"Cable length conserving medical instrument" was invented by Andrew C. Waterbury (Sunnyvale, Calif.), John Ryan Steger (Sunnyvale, Calif.) and Zhou Ye (Sunnyvale, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An apparatus includes a wrist, an end effector, a cable pair, and a transmission. A proximal wrist portion is coupled to a distal end portion of a shaft. Actuation of the wrist moves a distal wrist portion relative to the proximal wrist portion. The end effector is coupled to the distal wrist portion, and can be actuated to move relative to t...