Automated Guided Vehicle Collaborative Robot Patent Landscape 2026
- A shallow, recent field. Filings stayed at zero from 2017 through the early 2020s, then peaked at 7 in 2023 before falling back — this is a cluster, not a decade-long build-up.
- Control, not manipulation, carries the claim weight. G05D (non-electric variable control) appears in 10 of 11 records versus 5 for B25J manipulators, meaning safety and coordination logic is the more contested layer.
- Filing is concentrated in one office. China accounts for 5 of the 6 receiving-office jurisdictions represented, with single filings scattered across EPO, Canada, South Korea, the US and WIPO.
What this dataset covers
This landscape tracks patent families at the intersection of automated guided vehicles and collaborative-operation control: filings that combine AGV or guided-vehicle terminology with claim language around human-robot collaboration, safety monitoring, or cobot integration, classified under B25J9/16, B25J9/00 or G05D1/02. The scope is deliberately narrow: it excludes generic AGV navigation and generic industrial-arm manipulation unless the claims tie back to a collaborative-operation mechanism.
With 11 published records and 11 distinct families, this is a small, well-defined slice of the broader AGV and industrial-robotics literature rather than a mature sub-field. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent year figures are understated and should not be read as a decline in real filing activity yet.
Let an AI agent run this analysis on your own technology
Pick a task. Every answer cites the patents behind it.
Filing trend and classification spread
Eleven records span a decade of coverage but cluster tightly around a single peak year, with classification data pointing to control logic as the dominant claim territory.
A single-cluster filing curve
Zero filings in 2017 rose to a peak of 7 in 2023, with 2022 sitting at just 1 — the growth curve is a spike, not a steady climb, and the partial 2026 figure should be read against the 18-month publication lag rather than as a real drop-off.
Control classes dominate over manipulation classes
G05D (control of non-electric variables) covers 10 of 11 records, well ahead of B25J (manipulators & robots) at 5. The remaining classes — A63G, B60L, G06Q, G06T, G06V, H02J — each appear once, suggesting collaborative AGV claims are increasingly pulled into vision, power and even amusement-ride contexts rather than staying inside classic robotics IPC codes.
Shares are the percentage of the 11 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Automated Guided Vehicle Collaborative Robot with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about automated guided vehicle collaborative robot and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a representative filing
WO2024073490A3 — Logistics autonomous vehicle with robust object detection, localization and monitoring
An autonomous guided vehicle including a frame, a drive section, a payload handler, a vision system, and a controller. The vision system has a camera disposed to generate video stream data imaging of an object. The controller is communicably connected to register the video stream data imaging from the camera and to a time of flight sensor and a distance sensor that detects the distance of the object, effecting robust object detection and localization via alternating binocular and monocular vision.Filed by SYMBOTIC LLC, published 2024-05-16 — sensor-fusion claims of this kind sit squarely inside the G05D control layer that dominates this dataset.
View full filing| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CN115562303A | 突破精益瓶颈管理的多台AGV自主协同作业方法和系统 | 5 |
| 2 | CN116225017A | 基于权重贡献率网络神经算法的AGV协同作业系统及方法 | 2 |
| 3 | US11612824B2 | Automated guided vehicles | 2 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older filings; CN115562303A leads with 5 citations, ahead of CN116225017A and US11612824B2 at 2 each — treat this as a signal of influence within the dataset, not a ranking of current commercial importance.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Publication numbers are shown where the record carries one (3 of 3 rows); clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →What the data says about this field
The record count is small enough that every figure should be read as directional, but three patterns hold up across the dataset.
A spike, not a trend line
Activity was flat at zero through 2017, sat at 1 as late as 2022, then jumped to 7 filings in 2023. That shape looks like a single wave of related filings rather than sustained sector build-up, and it argues for checking who filed in that peak year before assuming the space is still opening up.
Control logic outweighs the arm itself
Twice as many records touch G05D (control of non-electric variables) as touch B25J (manipulators). For a field named after collaborative robots, the claim pressure sits more on coordination and safety-monitoring logic than on the physical manipulator, which is where designers should expect the densest prior art.
One office carries half the corpus
China accounts for 5 of the 11 records, with the rest split as single filings across EPO, Canada, South Korea, the US and WIPO. A filer targeting only one non-China jurisdiction is filing into comparatively open territory, at least within this narrow claim scope.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to automated guided vehicle collaborative robot, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| SK Eco Engineering Co., Ltd. | JUNGDO CO LTD | 1 |
Only one co-assignee pair appears in the dataset — SK Eco Engineering Co., Ltd. with JUNGDO CO LTD — indicating this is still largely a single-assignee filing pattern rather than a joint-development space.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
No assignee shows momentum in the latest year — every named entity in the momentum data logs 0 filings, consistent with the 2023 spike having already passed through the pipeline. That flatness, combined with the classification spread, points to specific sub-areas that remain lightly claimed.
CN115562303A assignee sets the citation benchmark
The most-cited record in the corpus, CN115562303A, describes a multi-AGV autonomous collaborative operation method aimed at lean-management bottlenecks — the kind of coordination-layer claim that tracks the G05D dominance seen across the dataset.
SYMBOTIC LLC's WO/US filing pair
SYMBOTIC LLC's WO2024073490A3 and its related US11612824B2 filing bring sensor-fusion object detection into the collaborative AGV space, one of only a handful of non-China-origin records in this dataset.
에스케이에코엔지니어링 and JUNGDO CO LTD
The only co-assignee pair in the corpus links a South Korean engineering firm with JUNGDO CO LTD, suggesting an isolated joint-development filing rather than an established partnership pattern.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Symbotic LLC | 0 | — |
| SK Eco Engineering Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Chen Fengyang | 0 | — |
| Xie Mingchao | 0 | -100% |
| Standard Robots (Wuxi) Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Boyunjianri (Fujian) Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| KUKA Robotics Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Nanjing Jinlinian Information Technology Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
This dataset is narrow enough that its real value is in framing questions, not closing them — the next steps depend on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate or opportunity mapping.
Check the peak-year filers individually
The 2023 spike is driving most of the trend; pulling the individual filings from that year will show whether it was one assignee or several moving at once.
Explore filing historyMap claims against the G05D/B25J split
With control-layer claims outnumbering manipulator claims two-to-one, a claim-by-claim comparison across those two subclasses will clarify where genuine freedom-to-operate gaps sit.
Compare claim scopeCommon questions on this landscape
This dataset contains 11 published records forming 11 distinct patent families, covering filings from 2015 through the 2026 cut-off date. That is a small corpus by patent-landscape standards, reflecting how narrowly the search scope is defined — it requires both AGV terminology and collaborative-operation or safety-monitoring claim language classified under B25J or G05D codes. Broader AGV navigation or generic robotic-arm patents outside that intersection are not counted here.
The trend data shows filings sitting at 0 in 2017 and just 1 as late as 2022, then jumping to 7 in 2023 before falling back toward zero. That pattern looks like a concentrated wave of related filings rather than a steady multi-year build-up, and it is worth checking which assignees filed in that single year to understand what triggered it. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the apparent drop-off after 2023 is also partly an artefact of records not yet being published.
G05D, covering control of non-electric variables, appears in 10 of the 11 records in this dataset, well ahead of B25J (manipulators and robots) at 5. This means the densest claim territory is coordination, navigation and safety-monitoring logic rather than the physical manipulator or gripper mechanism itself. Designers looking for freedom to operate should expect more crowded prior art around control algorithms than around arm hardware.
China accounts for 5 of the 11 records by receiving office, making it the single largest jurisdiction in this dataset. The remainder is spread thinly — one record each in Europe (EPO), Canada, South Korea, the United States and WIPO's PCT system. That spread suggests a filer targeting protection outside China in this specific niche faces comparatively little competing prior art in any one non-China office.
WO2024073490A3, filed by SYMBOTIC LLC and published 2024-05-16, describes a logistics autonomous guided vehicle with a frame, drive section, payload handler, vision system and controller that performs object detection and localisation by alternating binocular and monocular vision, cross-checked against time-of-flight and distance sensors. It sits within the G05D-heavy control layer that dominates this landscape, making it a useful reference point for anyone evaluating sensor-fusion claims in collaborative AGV systems. A related citing record, US11612824B2, also appears among the most-cited patents in this corpus.
Research Automated Guided Vehicle Collaborative Robot in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole automated guided vehicle collaborative robot corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.