US Patent Issued to Intuitive Surgical Operations on March 4 for "Hand presence sensing at control input device" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,242,662, issued on March 4, was assigned to Intuitive Surgical Operations Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.).

"Hand presence sensing at control input device" was invented by Lawton N. Verner (San Jose, Calif.), Jason W. Hemphill (Los Gatos, Calif.), Brian Luptak (Santa Clara, Calif.), Ashwinram Suresh (San Jose, Calif.), Clifford N. Bargar (San Francisco) and Hsien-Hsin Liao (Sunnyvale, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Implementations relate to hand presence sensing at a control input device. In some implementations, a control input device includes a base member, a handle coupled to the base member and configured to be manually contacted at a...