Humanoid Robot Sensor Integration Patents: Who Leads 2026
- Filing is accelerating late, not steadily: the trend sat flat through 2022 and only broke out afterward, peaking at 13 families in 2025 — this is a field whose patent record is barely 18 months deep.
- B25J dominates but B62D is a strong second signal: 8 of the matched records sit in motor-vehicle/steering classification, pointing to real cross-over from automotive sensor-fusion teams into legged robots.
- Filing is US-led with meaningful China and India volume: 14 records route through the United States, with 5 each in China and India — a three-way filing footprint rather than a single home jurisdiction.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent families at the intersection of humanoid and bipedal robot platforms and the sensing stack that lets them balance, grasp and act: proprioceptive sensing, IMU-vision-force fusion, and multi-sensor integration claimed under manipulator and control-oriented IPC classes. The corpus is small — 26 published families — which is itself informative: this is an early-stage claim space, not a mature one with settled dominant designs.
Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the 2026 count in any trend line understates real filing activity for that year. Read the last one to two years of any trend as a floor, not a ceiling.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 26 families: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
A late, steep breakout
Filings were at zero as recently as 2017 and stayed flat through the 2022 midpoint. The jump to a peak of 13 families in 2025 marks the point at which humanoid platforms moved from research demonstrators toward filed IP, with 4 more already recorded in the partial 2026 year.
Manipulator claims anchor the field, automotive classes cross over
Every matched record touches B25J (manipulators and robots), the expected anchor class. The next-largest group is B62D (motor vehicles and steering) at 8 records, followed by smaller but consistent groups in G05D, G06F and G06N — control, data processing and AI model claims respectively. A61B appears only once, suggesting surgical/diagnostic robotics has barely been touched by this specific sensor-fusion claim language.
Shares are the percentage of the 26 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Humanoid Robot Sensor Integration with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about humanoid robot sensor integration and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited prior art
Humanoid robot data collection system
A wearable data collection apparatus worn by a human operator generates pilot movement data from onboard sensors, converts it into robot control data, and streams it in real time to a humanoid robot over a network — a teleoperation-to-training pipeline built around the wearable's own sensor and articulated-arm hardware rather than the robot's onboard sensing alone.Filed by Figure AI Inc., published 2026 — illustrates how sensor-fusion claims are extending from the robot body to the human-worn capture rig used to train it.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US9089968B2 | Operating an in-line legged robot vehicle in ballistic flight | 20 |
| 2 | US20140100697A1 | Operating an in-line legged robot vehicle in ballistic flight | 17 |
| 3 | US11132598B1 | System and method for humanoid robot control and cognitive self-improvement without programming | 9 |
| 4 | CN206048251U | 基于多传感器融合的手势识别仿人机械手系统 | 7 |
| 5 | US20260070221A1 | Bipedal action model for humanoid robot | 6 |
| 6 | US20260097492A1 | Annotation model for humanoid robot data | 5 |
| 7 | US20220269923A1 | System and method for humanoid robot control and cognitive self-improvement without programming | 5 |
| 8 | CN118990480A | 一种人形机器人的目标识别和定位方法及系统 | 4 |
| 9 | CN121004621A | 人形机器人手眼协调智能化标定控制系统及方法 | 3 |
| 10 | US20260061611A1 | Management of multiple modes for humanoid robot | 1 |
Citation counts inside this corpus favour older filings — treat them as a signal of influence on later work, not as a measure 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 readings of the same dataset: where volume sits today, where it is moving, and what the citation record tells a new entrant.
Growth is still accelerating
With the 2022 midpoint at zero and a peak of 13 in 2025, this is not a plateauing field. Whoever files now is filing into thin prior art relative to the volume expected once 2025-26 applications finish publishing.
Automotive sensor-fusion teams are already here
The second-largest IPC group after B25J is a motor-vehicle and steering class, not a robotics-control class. That overlap suggests automotive ADAS and drivetrain-sensing expertise is being repurposed for legged locomotion.
No single dominant home market
The United States carries the largest share of receiving-office filings, but China and India each hold five — a meaningful three-jurisdiction footprint rather than a US-only or China-only story.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to humanoid robot sensor integration, with the prior art for and against each one.
Assignees and where the field is still open
The assignee ranking is a long tail: most entities in this corpus hold a single family, with recent-year momentum shared thinly across research institutes and small robotics firms rather than concentrated in one company.
Recent activity is fragmented, not concentrated
Assignees with the most recent-year activity — including Digital Artificial Intelligence, Tiger Robotics Technology, and the Indian Institute of Science — each show a single filing in the latest year, several down sharply year over year. No single company is compounding volume yet.
A small corpus still open to new entrants
With only 26 published families across the full search window, established freedom-to-operate positions are thin. New filers are competing against a handful of highly cited early records rather than a dense thicket.
Automotive and robotics assignees are converging
The motor-vehicle steering overlap in the IPC data suggests some assignees are filing sensor-fusion claims that could equally read on a wheeled or legged platform — worth checking prior art outside pure-play robotics assignees.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Digital Artificial Intelligence Co. | 1 | -89% |
| Tiger Robotics Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. | 1 | — |
| Indian Institute of Science | 1 | — |
| NEURAVILLE INC | 0 | — |
| GOULDING JOHN R | 0 | — |
| Kuawei (Shenzhen) Intelligent Digital Technology Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Company Limited | 0 | — |
| Zhejiang Sci-Tech University | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The trend and assignee data point to an early, fast-moving claim space. Two directions are worth pursuing next.
Model the 2025-26 filing surge as it publishes
With 13 families in 2025 and the 18-month publication lag still working through, the next 12 months of disclosures will materially reshape the assignee ranking and IPC spread shown here.
Track filings in EurekaCheck freedom-to-operate against the most-cited records
The highest-cited filings anchor prior art for ballistic-flight legged locomotion and humanoid cognitive control — any new filing in balance or control claims should be benchmarked against these first.
Run a citation check in EurekaCommon questions on humanoid robot sensor integration patents
This dataset identifies 26 published patent families matching humanoid and bipedal robot sensor-fusion claims under the relevant IPC classes, covering filings from 2015 through mid-2026. That is a small corpus by patent-landscape standards, which reflects how recently humanoid platforms have moved from lab demonstrators to filed IP. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the true number of filed-but-unpublished applications for 2025-26 is almost certainly higher than what is currently visible.
The assignee base in this corpus is a long tail rather than a concentrated field: most assignees hold a single family, and recent-year momentum is spread across research institutes and smaller robotics firms rather than one dominant filer. Figure AI's data-collection-system filing is one of the more recent and specific entries, illustrating a wearable-to-robot teleoperation approach. Readers should treat any single-year leader as provisional, since the field is still in its early filing years.
Search terms center on proprioceptive sensing, IMU-vision-force fusion, and general multi-sensor integration for humanoid and legged robots. The IPC composition confirms this: every record touches manipulator and robot control classification (B25J), with meaningful secondary activity in motor-vehicle/steering sensing (B62D), non-electric control variables (G05D), and AI-based computing (G06N). The presence of B62D suggests automotive sensor-fusion approaches are being adapted for legged locomotion rather than developed from scratch.
Yes, based on the trend data: filings were essentially flat at zero through 2022, then rose to a peak of 13 families in 2025, with 4 more already recorded in the partial 2026 year. That shape — flat, then a late steep rise — indicates the technology only recently reached the stage where organisations are converting R&D into filed claims. Given the publication lag, the 2025-26 period likely represents the start of a larger wave rather than its peak.
The IPC spread points to several under-claimed branches: surgical or diagnostic applications of humanoid sensing (only one A61B record), force-torque and tactile fusion specifically for grasping, and wearable-to-robot teleoperation data pipelines like the one Figure AI filed. AI-model claims layered directly on proprioceptive sensor data (the G06N overlap) also appear thin relative to the core manipulator classification. Any of these branches would let a new filer stake claims without competing directly against the most-cited balance-and-control 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.