Humanoid Robot Tactile Sensing Patents: Leaders & White Space 2026
- Filing peaked in 2025 at 11 families after climbing from zero in 2017, with 2026 too early in its cycle to read as decline.
- B25J dominates every record while B62D appears in a third of filings, pointing to wheeled-legged crossover platforms as a real design branch, not a footnote.
- Momentum is thinning, not building several assignees that were active show 0 filings or a negative year-on-year swing in the latest year, including one at -71%.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks 31 patent families filed against tactile sensor, force/torque sensor, skin sensor and haptic sensing claims within humanoid, bipedal and legged robot bodies, filtered to B25J13/08, G01L5/00 and B25J19. The scope is narrow by design: it isolates sensing hardware and integration claims from the much larger body of general humanoid-robot filings, so the counts here describe a specific and still-forming sub-field rather than robotics at large.
Coverage runs from 2015 through the 2026-07-31 cut-off. Publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the 2026 figure is structurally incomplete and should not be read as a drop in activity.
Filing trend and technology composition
Thirty-one families is a small enough corpus that individual assignees' filing decisions move the aggregate trend directly — read the composition data alongside the ranking table, not as a substitute for it.
A short, front-loaded filing curve
Filings rose from nothing in 2017 to a peak of 11 in 2025, with the 2022 midpoint at 8. The shape suggests a cluster of entrants filing in a tight window around 2023-2025 rather than a steadily building field, and the incomplete 2026 count leaves it open whether 2025 was a peak or simply the last full year on record.
B25J anchors the field; B62D signals crossover platforms
Every one of the 31 records touches B25J (manipulators and robots), which is expected given the search scope. The presence of B62D (motor vehicles and steering) in 10 records is the more informative signal: it marks wheeled-legged or vehicle-adjacent humanoid platforms as a distinct filing pattern, sitting alongside much smaller counts in control systems (G05B, G05D) and measurement (G01B, G01D, G01L).
Shares are the percentage of the 31 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Humanoid Robot Force and Tactile Sensing with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about humanoid robot force and tactile sensing and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative and most-cited filings
US20260091509A1 — End effector of a humanoid robot (Figure AI Inc.)
Discloses a humanoid robot end effector built around a tactile sensor assembly: a bridge structure with a base section and three flexure arms, each arm carrying a sloped section and a load section set at non-zero angles to one another, with a strain gauge bonded to each sloped section and an electronics assembly reading all three gauges.Filed 2026-04-02 — among the most recent records in this corpus.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20240269846A1 | Method, apparatus, and device for controlling legged robot, legged robot, computer-readable storage medium, a… | 8 |
| 2 | CN110802593A | 一种仿人机器人下肢关节零位标定方法 | 8 |
| 3 | JP2012081554A | Tactile sensor system | 6 |
| 4 | US20250353195A1 | Balance control method and apparatus for wheel-legged robot, device, and storage medium | 4 |
| 5 | WO2024120607A1 | Humanoid robot comprising articulated legs with wheels or tracks | 4 |
| 6 | US9120224B2 | Framework and method for controlling a robotic system using a distributed computer network | 4 |
| 7 | US20260008178A1 | Humanoid robot having advanced joint assemblies | 3 |
| 8 | US20250303581A1 | Mobile Robot providing Reality Capture and Metrology Grade geometric measurement for supporting Surveillance … | 2 |
| 9 | CN118443085A | 全柔性多模态高时空分辨率视触觉传感器 | 2 |
| 10 | CN110802593B | 一种仿人机器人下肢关节零位标定方法 | 2 |
Citation counts reflect influence within the searched corpus and skew toward older publications; they are not a measure 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. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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With only 31 families in scope, no single company controls the field outright, but the citation and co-assignment patterns point to where claim density is building.
The field is young and still front-loading
A field that went from zero to a peak of 11 annual families inside roughly eight years has not yet settled into a steady claim structure. Early entrants are still able to shape how the core mechanisms — strain gauge bridges, flexure arms, multi-axis load sensing — get described in claim language that later filers must design around.
Wheeled-legged crossover is a distinct branch
A third of the corpus sits at the intersection of legged robotics and vehicle/steering classifications, indicating that force and tactile sensing claims for wheel-legged or hybrid mobility platforms are being filed as a recognisable sub-branch rather than folded into general humanoid claims.
Momentum is cooling even among recent entrants
Several assignees that filed in prior years show zero output in the latest year, and the one assignee still filing shows a steep year-on-year decline. That combination is more consistent with a shakeout among early movers than with sustained buildup, though the incomplete latest year makes this a provisional read.
Filing is mostly solo, with one dense cluster
Only four co-assignee pairs appear across the corpus, and three of them link the same three organisations — a research institute, its parent automaker, and a university — to each other. That triangle is the only visible sign of coordinated, multi-party filing in this dataset; the rest of the corpus files independently.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to humanoid robot force and tactile sensing, with the prior art for and against each one.
Assignee landscape
The ranking table (rendered separately) shows a corpus without a dominant single filer: activity is spread across corporate, research-institute and university assignees, with recent-year momentum tilting downward across most of the active names.
No single assignee controls the space
With families spread across corporate and academic assignees and the strongest co-assignee cluster involving just three organisations, the field has not consolidated around one or two dominant filers the way more mature robotics sub-fields have.
One research triangle stands out
A Japanese automaker, its affiliated research institute, and a partner university appear together across all four strongest co-assignee pairs identified, suggesting a structured joint research programme rather than incidental co-filing.
Some entrants have gone quiet
Two assignees with prior activity recorded zero filings in the latest year against a prior-year baseline, a full stop rather than a slowdown. Whether that reflects strategic withdrawal, portfolio consolidation elsewhere, or simply filing-to-publication lag is not distinguishable from the data alone.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Digital Artificial Intelligence Corporation | 2 | -71% |
| Hexagon Robotics Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Hexagon Technology Center | 0 | -100% |
| Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| Toyota Central R&D Labs., Inc. | 0 | — |
| Beijing Institute of Technology | 0 | — |
| Toyota Motor Corporation | 0 | — |
| Tohoku University | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The aggregate numbers describe the shape of the field; the next step is testing a specific claim or design against it.
Check freedom-to-operate on a specific mechanism
Run the flexure-arm and strain-gauge bridge design in US20260091509A1 against your own end-effector geometry before committing to a sensor layout.
Explore in Patsnap EurekaTrack the automaker-institute-university cluster
Monitor the three-organisation collaboration for new joint filings, since it is the only structured research partnership visible in this corpus.
Set up monitoring in Patsnap EurekaDraft into the under-claimed branches
Distributed skin-wide tactile arrays and torque-sensor fusion with balance control both show thin coverage relative to core strain-gauge claims.
Draft claims in Patsnap EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
This landscape identifies 31 patent families published between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine humanoid, bipedal or legged robot claims with tactile, force/torque or skin sensor claims under IPC classes B25J13/08, G01L5/00 and B25J19. That is a narrow, specific slice of robotics patenting, not a count of all humanoid robot patents. Filing peaked at 11 families in 2025, and the 2026 figure is still incomplete because publication typically trails filing by about 18 months.
No single company dominates this corpus outright; activity is spread across corporate, research-institute and university assignees. The most visible structured collaboration links a Japanese automaker, its affiliated research institute, and a partner university, who appear together across the strongest co-assignee pairs in the dataset. Recent-year momentum has been mixed to declining across most active filers, so leadership in this niche is still unsettled rather than established.
US20260091509A1, assigned to Figure AI Inc., claims a humanoid robot end effector built around a tactile sensor assembly with a bridge structure of three flexure arms, each combining a sloped and a load section at non-zero angles, with a strain gauge on each sloped section feeding a shared electronics assembly. It is a specific mechanical and sensing architecture, not a claim over tactile sensing generally, so designs using different geometries, different numbers of flexure arms, or non-strain-gauge sensing modalities sit outside its literal scope. Anyone designing a similar three-arm strain-gauge bridge should review its claims closely before finalising geometry.
The clearest gaps relative to core strain-gauge and force/torque claims are in distributed, skin-wide tactile arrays, sensor fusion that ties tactile feedback directly to whole-body balance control, and force sensing tailored to wheel-legged hybrid platforms, which appear in a third of the corpus via B62D classification but with little dedicated sensing claim depth. These are areas with real technical activity in the surrounding literature but thin patent claim density in this specific dataset. That combination — active development, light claiming — is what makes a branch worth checking before assuming it is occupied.
Filings rose from zero in 2017 to a peak of 11 families in 2025, but several previously active assignees show zero filings in the latest year, and the one assignee still filing recorded a steep year-on-year decline. That pattern looks more like an early cluster of entrants followed by a shakeout than a field building steady momentum. The 2026 count is too early in its publication cycle to confirm whether this is a genuine slowdown or simply a reporting lag.
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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.