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AssigneeIntuitive Surgical Operations, Inc.
InventorsNicola Diolaiti, Federico Barbagli, Samuel Y. Chang, Vincent Duindam
Estimating the term…
Systems and methods for detecting environmental forces on a flexible elongate instrument include an actuator for inserting and retracting the instrument and a control unit. The control unit is configured to determine a force exerted by the instrument on tissue of a patient. The force is determined based on one or more of a shape of the instrument, a force being exerted by the actuator, or an amount of force being applied at a proximal end of the instrument. In some embodiments the control unit determines the shape using a shape sensor. In some embodiments, the control unit determines the force exerted by the actuator based on a current of the actuator. In some embodiments, the control unit determines the amount of force being applied to the proximal end of the instrument using a force sensor located proximal to the instrument.
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A medical system comprising:
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A method of operating a medical system, the method comprising:
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A non-transitory machine-readable medium comprising a plurality of machine-readable instructions which when executed by one or more processors associated with a device are adapted to cause the one or more processors to perform a method comprising:
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Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.