AGV Manipulator Design Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
- Filing activity has already peaked and is flattening. 2019 was the high point at 19 filings; by the 2022 midpoint annual filing had settled to 15, and the trend since reads flat-to-declining rather than accelerating.
- The United States and China together account for most of the filing volume. Of 145 families, the US receiving office holds 50 and China 33 — well ahead of Europe (23), Japan (19), the PCT route (6) and South Korea (4).
- Co-assignment activity is thin and concentrated in one cluster. Only 5 co-assignee pairs exist in the whole dataset, and all of the strongest links run through a single filer, Dynamic Concept, alongside named individual inventors.
Filing growth compares 2021 (7 records) with 2024 (7) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 145 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent families at the intersection of automated guided vehicles and onboard manipulation — mobile bases fitted with a robot arm, end effector, or other onboard manipulator, rather than fixed-position industrial arms or bare navigation systems. The search combines AGV-specific terminology with manipulator claim language and the core B25J manipulator IPC classes, so the set is deliberately narrower than general mobile-robotics coverage.
The 145 families span 2015 through the 2026 cut-off. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent one or two years in any trend line will look thinner than the underlying filing activity actually was — a real slowdown may look sharper here than it is, but a real rebound would also be masked.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 145 families: how filing volume moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in alongside the core manipulator classification.
A peak in 2019, then a plateau
Filings rose from a single record in 2017 to a peak of 19 in 2019, then eased toward 15 at the 2022 midpoint. Read the final one to two years as undercounted rather than as a genuine drop-off, per the publication-lag caveat above.
Manipulator claims lean on control and material-handling art
Every record carries a B25J manipulator classification by construction of the search, but a third of the set (37 of 145) also touches G05D non-electric control art, and meaningful blocks sit in B65G conveying (22), B66F lifting (16), and machine-tool/vehicle-adjacent classes (B23P, B23Q, B62D, H10P) — evidence that manipulator claims here are rarely filed in isolation from the mobility and handling systems they sit on.
Shares are the percentage of the 145 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 Manipulator Design with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about automated guided vehicle manipulator design and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a representative filing
US9410811B2 — KUKA Laboratories GmbH
The invention relates to an automated guided vehicle, a system with a computer and an automated guided vehicle, a method of planning a virtual track and a method of operating an automated guided vehicle. The automated guided vehicle is to move automatically along a virtual track within an environment from a start point to an end point. The environment comprises sections connecting the start point, the end point, and an intermediate point. A graph is assigned to the environment.Filed by KUKA Laboratories GmbH, published 2016-08-09 — chosen here as representative of how AGV navigation claims and onboard-manipulator claims are frequently bundled into a single family.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5219264A | Mobile robot on-board vision system | 189 |
| 2 | US20170066592A1 | Automated guided vehicle (AGV) with batch picking robotic arm | 159 |
| 3 | US20150375390A1 | Robotic system for applying surface finishes to large objects | 154 |
| 4 | JP2017132002A | Automatic carrier with robot arm, robot system, and control method of automatic carrier with robot arm | 80 |
| 5 | US20160130017A1 | Performing Surface Treatments Using an Automated Guided Vehicle | 62 |
| 6 | JP2002264070A | Mobile robot and mobile robot system | 59 |
| 7 | US20160288331A1 | Automated dynamic manufacturing systems and related methods | 50 |
| 8 | JP2001252883A | Movable robot system | 49 |
| 9 | US10137566B2 | Automated guided vehicle (AGV) with batch picking robotic arm | 40 |
| 10 | JP1999320465A | Control method for robot arm | 34 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus skew toward older filings simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations — treat this table as a signal of influence on later art, not a ranking of current commercial relevance.
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Three read-throughs from the filing and citation data that matter more than the raw counts on their own.
Growth has already crested
The category peaked in 2019 and has not returned to that level since. That does not mean the underlying engineering problem is solved — high filing density in earlier years occupied core claim space on arm mounting, base coordination and end-effector swap mechanisms, and later filers have had to route around it rather than repeat it.
Two offices dominate, but for different reasons
US filings lead the set, with China close behind and Europe and Japan each in the high teens to low twenties. A PCT count of only 6 suggests most applicants are choosing direct national or regional filing over international-phase routing, consistent with a field still organised around domestic manufacturing bases.
Filing here is largely solo
Only 5 co-assignee pairs exist across 145 families, and the strongest links all trace back to one filer, Dynamic Concept, paired with named individual inventors rather than corporate co-owners. That points to a field where most assignees file independently rather than through joint ventures or shared-IP arrangements.
Influence sits with early vision and picking patents
The most-cited record in the set is a mobile robot on-board vision system, followed closely by an AGV batch-picking robotic arm filing. Both predate the 2019 peak, reinforcing that citation leadership in this corpus reflects age and foundational scope more than recent commercial traction.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to automated guided vehicle manipulator design, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the room still is
Recent-year momentum is muted across the named assignees tracked here — most show zero filings in the latest year, with ABB the only one still active in the window. That is consistent with a field past its filing peak rather than one with a single runaway leader.
ABB (Switzerland)
ABB is the only named assignee in this set with a filing recorded in the most recent year, while Google, Dynamic Concept, Mobile Industrial Robots, Denso and Texas Instruments all show zero in the same window. That is a thin signal on its own, but it is the only positive momentum data point in the set.
Dynamic Concept and named co-inventors
All of the dataset's co-assignee activity traces to Dynamic Concept filing alongside named individuals (Neron Jean Benoit, Cote Patrice, Desmeules Jean Francois). This looks like an inventor-led filing practice rather than a joint-venture structure, and it is the only cluster of shared ownership visible in the corpus.
A long tail beyond the named leaders
Beyond the handful of assignees with visible recent activity, the bulk of the 145 families sit with entities that show no momentum in the latest tracked year. That pattern — many filers, little repeat activity — is typical of a field where claim scope is still being staked out piecemeal rather than consolidated.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| ABB (Switzerland) Ltd. | 1 | — |
| Google LLC | 0 | — |
| DYNAMIC CONCEPT | 0 | — |
| Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR) | 0 | — |
| Denso Corporation | 0 | — |
| Texas Instruments Incorporated | 0 | — |
| The Boeing Company | 0 | — |
| Bastian Solutions, LLC | 0 | — |
Where to take this from here
The dataset points to a field past its filing peak but still fragmented across independent filers — that combination usually rewards a targeted search over a broad one.
Check freedom-to-operate against the top-cited cluster
The highest-cited records — the on-board vision system, batch-picking arm, and surface-finishing filings — are the ones most likely to have spawned defensive continuations. Run a claim-by-claim check against these before committing to a mounting or end-effector design.
Explore prior art in Eureka →Probe the under-claimed branches directly
Quick-change coupling, multi-arm coordination and lift-integrated manipulation show thinner combined filing density than the core B25J classification. A narrow, well-drafted claim in one of these branches has a better chance of standing alone.
Run a white-space search in Eureka →Watch ABB's next filing, not last year's leaders
Most named assignees here show zero recent-year activity; ABB is the exception. Track its next 12 months of filings rather than assuming the historical peak-year leaders are still setting direction.
Set up assignee monitoring in Eureka →Common questions on AGV manipulator design patents
By citation count, the most influential records are an on-board vision system for mobile robots and an AGV fitted with a batch-picking robotic arm, followed by a surface-finishing robotic system and a Japanese filing on automatic carriers with robot arms. These are older filings, so their citation lead partly reflects the time they have had to accumulate references rather than current commercial dominance. Newer entrants should still check these families for foundational claims on arm mounting, vision-guided picking and surface-treatment sequencing, since later filings in the space frequently cite back to them.
Filing activity peaked in 2019 at 19 records and had eased to 15 by the 2022 midpoint, which reads as flat-to-declining rather than an accelerating field. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the final year or two in the dataset will always understate true activity, so a small rebound in filing could already be underway without yet being visible in the data. On balance, this looks like a field where the core claim space was staked out earlier in the period rather than one still in an early growth phase.
The United States receiving office leads with 50 of the 145 tracked families, followed by China at 33, Europe (EPO) at 23, and Japan at 19. South Korea and the PCT international route each account for single-digit counts, suggesting most applicants file directly into their target national or regional office rather than through an international-phase application. This split points to the US and China as the two markets where competitive filing pressure and freedom-to-operate risk are highest.
US9410811B2, filed by KUKA Laboratories GmbH, covers an automated guided vehicle system built around a virtual track: a computer plans a graph-based route through an environment with a start point, an intermediate point and an end point, and the vehicle follows that virtual track automatically. The claims center on the navigation and route-planning method and the AGV/computer system that executes it, rather than on the design of any onboard manipulator arm itself. Anyone building a manipulator-equipped AGV should read this family for its virtual-track planning claims specifically, since a manipulator payload riding on a similarly planned track could still intersect with its scope.
The IPC composition data shows most families cluster tightly around core B25J manipulator classification, with thinner combined coverage in branches like lift-integrated manipulation (B66F overlap), vehicle-steering-integrated arm control (B62D overlap), and multi-arm coordination on a shared chassis. Co-assignment activity is also very low across the whole dataset — only 5 pairs — which suggests little joint-IP consolidation has happened yet in these adjacent branches. A first claim drafted specifically around quick-change end-effector coupling or dynamic arm stability during base motion has a reasonable chance of standing apart from the denser core B25J prior art.
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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.