Force Feedback Glove Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
Filing growth compares 2021 (2 records) with 2024 (9) — 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 54 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the force feedback glove patent record shows
Force feedback gloves sit at the intersection of wearable mechanics and digital control logic, and the patent record reflects that split. 68.5% of the 54 records in scope carry a G06F digital-data-processing classification, meaning most filings protect the control, sensing or software layer rather than the glove’s physical actuation hardware. Mechanical and garment-specific classes — B25J manipulators, A41D outerwear construction — are present but thin, which is consistent with a field where the wearable shell is often treated as a given and the contested ground is signal processing, calibration and control.
Filing offices concentrate heavily in China, which received far more filings than the US, EPO, India, WIPO and the UK combined. That geographic skew, paired with a filing surge into 2024, points to an active and still-forming field rather than one where claim space has settled. Readers should treat 2025 and 2026 counts as provisional: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent years in any trend will always look thinner than they eventually turn out to be.
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Filing trend and classification mix
Two views of the same 54 records: how filing activity has moved year over year, and how those records classify across IPC subclasses. Because a record can carry more than one class, the composition shares sum to more than 100%.
A sharp run-up into 2024
Filings rose from 2 in 2021 to 9 in 2024 — a 350% increase over that three-year span, and the fastest growth stretch in the coverage window. 2019 remains the peak year so far at 9 filings, meaning 2024 has already matched the field's historic high. Years beyond 2024 are undercounted because of publication lag and should not be read as a slowdown.
Software and control logic dominate the classification mix
G06F digital-data-processing claims appear in 68.5% of the 54 records, well ahead of B25J manipulators and robots (14.8%) and a cluster of A61B, A61H and G09B classes each sitting at 11.1%. Garment-construction claims under A41D and commerce-oriented G06Q claims are the thinnest branches at 5.6% each, suggesting less-contested ground for wearable-form and business-model claims relative to the crowded control-software layer.
Shares are the percentage of the 54 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Haptics & Tactile Interfaces: Force Feedback Glove Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about haptics & tactile interfaces: force feedback glove patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe prior art anchoring this field
US5429140A — Integrated virtual reality rehabilitation system
A rehabilitation system employs a force feedback system, such as a force feedback glove, to simulate virtual deformable objects. Prior to rehabilitation, the patient places his or her hand in a sensing glove which measures the force exertable by the patient's digits. Information from the sensing glove is received by an interface and transmitted to a computer where the information can be used to diagnose the patient's manual capability. The computer generates rehabilitation control signals for a force feedback glove. The patient places his or her hand in the force feedback glove and attempts to bring the digits together as though grasping the virtual object. The force feedback glove resists that motion.Filed by American Home Products Corporation, granted 1995 — the most-cited record in this dataset at 577 citations.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5429140A | Integrated virtual reality rehabilitation system | 577 |
| 2 | US20020146672A1 | Method and apparatus for rehabilitation of neuromotor disorders | 110 |
| 3 | US6827579B2 | Method and apparatus for rehabilitation of neuromotor disorders | 78 |
| 4 | US20030222977A1 | Intelligent system and 3D virtual object generator | 45 |
| 5 | CN106249884A | 一种气压驱动的力反馈和触觉反馈装置 | 29 |
| 6 | CN110123573A | 一种偏瘫上肢代偿运动监测与抑制的康复机器人训练系统 | 19 |
| 7 | EP2345951A2 | Force-feedback interface device for the hand | 16 |
| 8 | CN105551339A | 基于虚拟现实技术的书法练习系统及方法 | 13 |
| 9 | CN118238147A | 基于遥操作的仿生机械手人机交互系统及方法 | 12 |
| 10 | CN114779943A | 力反馈手套及控制方法 | 11 |
Citation counts inside this searched corpus favour older filings; treat them as a signal of influence on later work, not of current commercial relevance.
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. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three findings that change how a filing or freedom-to-operate review should be scoped in this field.
Leadership is real but not exclusive
The top 5 assignees combined account for 38.9% of all 54 records in scope, and the top 10 combined reach 57.4%. That leaves a substantial share of the field — over 40% at the ten-assignee mark — spread across a long tail of the remaining ranked companies, many with only one or two filings.
The field is accelerating, not maturing
Filings rose from 2 in 2021 to 9 in 2024, matching the field's historic peak year of 2019. High recent filing density means claim space is being actively occupied in the control and sensing layers — it does not mean the underlying technology has settled into a dominant design.
Software claims crowd the field; mechanical claims don't
G06F digital-processing claims sit in over two-thirds of the 54 records, while A41D garment-construction claims sit at 5.6%. Drafting around the physical glove structure, rather than the control software, currently faces a thinner prior-art wall.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to haptics & tactile interfaces: force feedback glove patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| AT&T Mobility II LLC | AT&T Intellectual Property I, L.P. | 3 |
| Shenzhen Research Institute of Xiamen University | Xiamen University | 2 |
| Beihang University | Peng Cheng Laboratory | 1 |
Co-assignee pairs are rare in this dataset — only 3 identified pairings, the strongest linking two AT&T entities across three shared records — suggesting most filings here come from single institutions rather than joint-venture R&D.
Turning this landscape into a filing decision
The dataset shows where claim density sits today. The next step is testing a specific claim or design against it.
Check freedom-to-operate before drafting
Run a candidate glove or control claim against the G06F and B25J clusters where density is highest, rather than assuming the field is open because it is young.
Explore in EurekaMap the white space branches directly
A41D garment construction and G06Q commerce claims are the thinnest branches in this dataset — worth a focused search before assuming they are undifferentiated.
Run a white space searchWatch the 2024 filing surge
The 350% growth from 2021 to 2024 is the sharpest movement in the record; track who is filing now, knowing 2025–2026 counts will keep rising as publications catch up.
Set up a filing alertCommon questions about force feedback glove patents
The dataset's assignee ranking covers 44 companies, with the leader holding 8 records out of 54 in scope. The top 5 assignees combined account for 38.9% of all records, and the top 10 combined reach 57.4%, which means a majority of the field's remaining filings are spread thinly across many single- or double-filing entrants. No single company holds a dominant share large enough to block the field outright, so a freedom-to-operate review needs to look past the leaders into the long tail.
Most filings classify under G06F digital-data-processing, covering 68.5% of the 54 records — this is the control, sensing and software layer rather than the physical glove. Secondary clusters sit in B25J manipulators and robots (14.8%), and smaller groups in A61B diagnosis/surgery, A61H physical therapy, and G09B educational aids, each around 11.1%. Garment-construction claims under A41D and commerce-related G06Q claims are the thinnest branches, each at 5.6% of records.
It is growing. Filings rose from 2 in 2021 to 9 in 2024, a 350% increase over that three-year span, matching the field's historic peak year of 2019. Counts for 2025 and 2026 look lower in the raw data, but that reflects the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication rather than an actual slowdown, so those years should not be read as declining activity.
US5429140A, granted in 1995 to American Home Products Corporation, is the most-cited record in this dataset at 577 citations, describing a rehabilitation system that uses a sensing glove to measure patient hand force and a force feedback glove to resist motion during simulated grasping. Its core concept — pairing a sensing glove with force feedback for rehabilitation control — sits upstream of much of the A61H and A61B activity in this field. Anyone drafting rehabilitation-specific glove claims should map their independent claims against this patent's scope before proceeding, since its age means the original term has likely expired but its citation network shows it shaped how later claims were framed.
The classification data points to A41D garment construction and G06Q business-process claims as the thinnest branches, each present in only 5.6% of the 54 records, compared with 68.5% for G06F control software. That gap suggests claims focused on the physical wearable structure or on commercial/service models around glove-based haptics face less crowded prior art than another control-algorithm filing. It is not proof the space is unclaimed, only that density is lower — a targeted search against those specific classes is the necessary next step before filing.
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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.