ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 25 -- United States Patent no. 12,339,871, issued on June 24, was assigned to INTUITIVE SURGICAL OPERATIONS INC. (Sunnyvale, Calif.).

"Systems and methods for synchronizing nodes of a robotic system" was invented by Brian D. Hoffman (Mountain View, Calif.) and Joshua Radel (Menlo Park, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A robotic system is provided. The robotic system includes a publishing node including at least one first synchronization database that includes a plurality of attributes, each of the attributes including a tag identifying the attribute and data, a flag associated with each of the attributes, and a subscriber list. The system also includes a subscriber ...