US Patent Issued to Covidien on May 26 for "Setup arm pitch joint estimator" (American, German Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 26 -- United States Patent no. 12,636,104, issued on May 26, was assigned to Covidien LP (Mansfield, Mass.).

"Setup arm pitch joint estimator" was invented by Todd A. Ballantyne (Nashua, N.H.), Stefan Joerg (Munich) and Paul M. Loschak (Somerville, Mass.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A process for determining a pitch angle of a support arm for a linkage of a robot includes receiving accelerometer readings from an inertial measurement unit of an instrument drive unit (IDU) within a frame of the IDU and calculating the pitch angle of the support arm from a horizontal of a base of the robot."

The patent was filed on Feb. 17, 2020, under Application No. 17/429,491.

*For fu...