ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,605,851, issued on April 21, was assigned to TOYOTA RESEARCH INSTITUTE INC. (Los Altos, Calif.).
"Robot end effector" was invented by Alexander Alspach (Woburn, Mass.), Andrew M. Beaulieu (Somerville, Mass.), Brendan Hathaway (Newton, Mass.), Naveen Suresh Kuppuswamy (Arlington, Mass.) and Aimee S. Goncalves (Kingston, Mass.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A robot end effector is contemplated. The robot end effector comprises a first deformable gripper, a second deformable gripper coupled to the first deformable gripper by a linkage, and an actuator coupled to the linkage and operable to move at least one of the first deformable gripper ...