ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 7 -- United States Patent no. 12,673,435, issued on July 7, was assigned to Comau S.p.A. (Grugliasco, Italy).
"Gripping tool which can be used by a manipulator device for picking up and handling pieces" was invented by Marco Cecili (Grugliasco, Italy), Fabrizio Girardin (Grugliasco, Italy), Constantino Pischedda (Grugliasco, Italy) and Luca Piras (Grugliasco, Italy).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A gripping tool, which can be used by a manipulator device for picking-up and handling pieces, includes a plurality of gripping devices (50), distributed in groups, each group consisting of one or more gripping devices. The gripping devices (50) of each group of gripping devices ...