ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,330,314, issued on June 17, was assigned to Verb Surgical Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.).

"Systems and methods for docking with a trocar" was invented by Berk Gonenc (Cupertino, Calif.), Xin Liu (Milpitas, Calif.), Jose Luis Cordoba (Malaga, Spain), Bernhard A. Fuerst (Sunnyvale, Calif.), Dennis Moses (Hollywood, Fla.) and Pablo Garcia Kilroy (Menlo Park, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A surgical robotic system has a tool drive coupled to a distal end of a robotic arm that has a plurality of actuators. The tool drive has a docking interface to receive a trocar. The system also includes one or more sensors that are operable to visually...