ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 4 -- United States Patent no. 12,318,164, issued on June 3, was assigned to INTUITIVE SURGICAL OPERATIONS INC. (Sunnyvale, Calif.).
"Systems and methods for controlling a robotic manipulator or associated tool" was invented by Simon P. DiMaio (San Carlos, Calif.), Mark Froggatt (Blacksburg, Va.), Xingchi He (San Jose, Calif.), Govinda Payyavula (Sunnyvale, Calif.) and David W. Robinson (Los Altos, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A system includes a tool, an input device, a shape sensor system, and a processing unit. The processing unit is configured to determine a state estimate of the input device based on shape information from the shape sensor system, and contro...