ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,310,691, issued on May 27, was assigned to Intuitive Surgical Operations Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.).
"Multi-cable medical instrument" was invented by Bram Gilbert Antoon Lambrecht (Redwood City, Calif.), S. Christopher Anderson (San Francisco) and Ladd T. Johnson (Scotts Valley, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A medical instrument includes cable pairs respectively wound around input spindles and connected to actuate degrees of freedom of an instrument shaft structure. The cables may connect so that rotating the input spindles actuates corresponding degrees of freedom. First pulleys in the instrument may receive first cables from the ...