Industrial Robot Machine Vision Patent Landscape 2026
The industrial robot machine vision field holds 1,064 patent families and is still expanding on a multi-year basis, with the recent three-year window outpacing the prior period by 63%, though annual volume has eased from its 2023 peak. ABB leads a moderately fragmented field where the top five filers hold 19% of the hundred largest filers’ combined output, and the United States is the dominant filing jurisdiction.
ABB leads a moderately fragmented field with no dominant monopoly
ABB (Schweiz) AG holds the top position with 40 patent families, followed by MacDonald Dettwiler & Associates (25), Intuitive Surgical Operations (24), Intrinsic Innovation (23), and Ocado Innovation (21). The ranking spans automation incumbents, surgical robotics specialists, and logistics-focused entrants.
The top five filers account for 19% of the hundred largest filers’ combined total, indicating moderate concentration. The gap between ABB’s 40 families and the fifth-ranked Ocado’s 21 families is meaningful but not prohibitive, leaving room for challengers to close the distance with sustained investment.
| # | Applicant | Patent families | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ABB (Schweiz) AG | 40 | |
| 2 | MACDONALD DETTWILER & ASSOC INC | 25 | |
| 3 | Intuitive Surgical Operations Inc | 24 | |
| 4 | Intrinsic Innovation LLC | 23 | |
| 5 | Ocado Innovation Ltd | 21 | |
| 6 | Mitsubishi Electric Corporation | 19 | |
| 7 | Omron Corporation | 18 | |
| 8 | The Boeing Company | 18 | |
| 9 | Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories Inc | 16 | |
| 10 | Samsung Electronics Co Ltd | 16 |
| # | Applicant | Patent families | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11 | Mujin Inc | 15 | |
| 12 | Outrider Technologies Inc | 14 | |
| 13 | Ebots Inc | 14 | |
| 14 | Miso Robotics Inc | 12 | |
| 15 | Mako Surgical Corp | 12 | |
| 16 | Dexterity Inc | 11 | |
| 17 | Porter Burke E Machinery Co | 10 | |
| 18 | Seiko Epson Corporation | 9 | |
| 19 | 3M Innovative Properties Company | 9 | |
| 20 | Fastbrick IP Pty Ltd | 9 |
ABB’s lead reflects deep integration across manipulator control and vision-guided robotics. The presence of specialized players such as Intuitive Surgical and Ocado Innovation signals that machine vision value is accruing to vertically focused applications — surgical robotics and automated warehousing — alongside the generalist robotics platforms.
Data for 2024–2026 should be treated as a lower bound due to typical patent publication lag of 18–24 months; the true filing volume for those years is likely higher than currently indexed. Longer-window growth, applicant concentration, and technology-route coverage are therefore more reliable signals than the latest-year bar alone.
Multi-year growth remains positive despite a post-2023 moderation in annual volume
The filing trend and technology composition charts together reveal both the pace of investment and where that investment is concentrated across IPC classes.
Annual filing trend
Filings rose from 56 families in 2017 to a peak of 177 in 2023, reflecting sustained field expansion. The apparent decline in 2024 (140) and 2025 (124) — and the very low 2026 count of 27 — is largely an artifact of publication lag and should not be read as a reversal of trend. The three-year recent window still sits 63% above the prior comparable window.
↗ Hover for values · click a bar to ask EurekaTechnology composition
B25J (Manipulators & Robots) dominates with 1,261 patent records, confirming that machine vision patents in this space are overwhelmingly anchored to manipulator systems. Secondary clusters in G06T (Image Data Processing, 197), G05B (Control & Regulating Systems, 148), and G06V (Image/Video Recognition, 148) highlight growing investment in the software and perception layers. Smaller but notable clusters exist in A61B (Diagnosis & Surgery, 79), B65G (Conveying & Material Handling, 78), and G06K (Data Recognition, 78), reflecting vertical application pull.
↗ Hover for values · click a bar to ask EurekaHighly cited patent families surfaced by the query
Citation-heavy patent families returned by the query. Use this section as citation context, not as a curated list of the most topic-specific patents.
Learning visual pose estimation for robotic operat…
A method and system for robotic skill learning using visual pose estimation. A robot arm performing a task, such as an assembly or workpiece positioning operation, has a camera mounted thereon. The camera provides training images of an operation scene from a variety of positions and under a variety of lighting conditions. For each image, a relative pose of… (excerpt from the patent abstract)
| # | Patent | Citations |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Detection and reconstruction of an environment to … | 512 |
| 2 | Adaptive vision-based controller | 323 |
| 3 | Tele-autonomous system and method employing time/p… | 319 |
| 4 | Object Pickup Strategies for a Robotic Device | 262 |
| 5 | Adaptive tracking vision and guidance system | 254 |
| 6 | Real-Time Determination of Object Metrics for Traj… | 248 |
| 7 | Methods and systems for recognizing machine-readab… | 222 |
| 8 | Vision system for distinguishing touching parts | 209 |
Ranked by total forward citations. Citation counts favour older and broadly cited patent families, and broad or adjacent patents may appear when they match the search scope. Treat this section as citation context, not as a curated list of the most topic-specific patents. Some patent titles may be shown in their original, non-English language where an accurate translation could not be guaranteed.
What the patent structure means for R&D strategy
The combination of moderate concentration, a clear multi-year growth arc, and broad IPC coverage signals an active field where late movers can still establish meaningful positions in adjacent application domains.
Growth stage — multi-year expansion with a 2023 peak
The field is classified as Growth: recent three-year filings exceed the prior three-year window by 63%, confirming that overall investment is still rising. Annual volume peaked in 2023 at 177 families and has eased since, though 2024–2025 figures are understated by publication lag. Entrants can still capture meaningful positions, but the window for low-cost entry is narrowing as incumbents accumulate portfolios.
Growth stageModerate concentration with a clear leadership tier
The top five filers hold 19% of the hundred largest filers’ combined output — meaningful but far from monopolistic. ABB’s lead of 40 patent families versus Ocado’s fifth-place 21 families shows a roughly 2× gap at the top. Below the top five, the field fragments quickly across logistics, surgical, aerospace, and food-processing specialists, suggesting vertical niches remain contestable.
Moderate fragmentationLimited co-filing activity — one documented partnership
Only one co-applicant relationship is evidenced in the corpus: Mitsubishi Electric Corporation and Kyoto University co-filed one patent family together. The near-absence of co-filing suggests that most R&D in this field is conducted within single-organization programs, reducing technology-transfer risk but also limiting cross-disciplinary leverage. Organizations considering alliance strategies face a relatively open partnership landscape.
Low co-filingUS-dominant filing with China as the secondary arena
The United States accounts for 530 patent records, the largest single jurisdiction, followed by China (241), Europe via EPO (159), WIPO/PCT (125), and India (107). The strong US position reflects the concentration of leading applicants such as ABB, MacDonald Dettwiler, Intuitive Surgical, Intrinsic Innovation, and Ocado in the North American market. China’s 241 records signal growing domestic filings, and the EPO and PCT routes show applicants protecting innovations across multiple markets.
US-led, China risingGo beyond the landscape: Eureka’s TRIZ Solution agent breaks down an R&D problem and returns patented concept solutions, each with a technical approach and cited patent & literature evidence.
| Applicant | Collaborator | Co-filings |
|---|---|---|
| Mitsubishi Electric Corporation | Kyoto University | 1 |
Co-filing pairs, ranked by the number of jointly-filed patent families.
ABB anchors the field; Ocado and Mitsubishi Electric research labs are the fastest-rising challengers
The top applicants split between established automation platforms and vertically focused specialists; momentum data reveals that several newer entrants are building portfolios rapidly from a low base.
ABB (Schweiz) AG
ABB leads with 40 patent families, concentrated heavily in B25J 9 (Manipulators & Robots, 28 families) and complemented by G05B 19 (Control & Regulating Systems, 8 families) and B25J 19 (Manipulators & Robots, 6 families). This profile confirms ABB’s focus on integrated robot control and vision-guided manipulation rather than pure image-processing software. Recent momentum shows a –20% trend versus the prior period, suggesting the current portfolio is maturing rather than accelerating.
families: 40Ocado Innovation Ltd
Ocado Innovation holds 21 patent families and is classified as a new entrant by momentum data, with 18 of those families filed in the recent period — making it the fastest-rising applicant in the corpus by recent-period volume. Its technology focus sits almost entirely within B25J 9 (Manipulators & Robots, 19 families), reflecting its warehouse automation use case. The new-entrant momentum from a warehousing-native organization signals that logistics automation is becoming a primary driver of machine vision innovation alongside traditional industrial automation.
families: 21| Applicant | Recent (3 yrs) | Trend |
|---|---|---|
| ABB (Schweiz) AG | 8 | ▼ -20% |
| MacDonald Dettwiler & Associates Inc | 6 | ▼ -50% |
| Intuitive Surgical Operations Inc | 11 | ▲ +10% |
| Ocado Innovation Ltd | 18 | ▲ new entrant |
| Mitsubishi Electric Corporation | 7 | ▲ new entrant |
| The Boeing Company | 3 | ▲ new entrant |
| Omron Corporation | 4 | ▲ new entrant |
| Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories Inc | 10 | ▲ new entrant |
Under-served IPC branches adjacent to the core manipulator domain
While B25J dominates the corpus, several adjacent IPC classes show activity levels that are low relative to their technical proximity to machine vision-guided robotics, and may represent areas where new filings face less prior-art density.
G06V · Image/Video Recognition
G06V holds 148 patent records — meaningful in absolute terms but representing only 5% of the IPC distribution, despite image and video recognition being central to robot perception. Given the rapid advance of deep-learning-based visual recognition and its direct applicability to bin-picking, defect detection, and scene understanding, this branch carries genuine technical value. Organizations with computer-vision software competencies could establish differentiated positions here without competing head-on in the crowded B25J manipulator space.
Search this in Eureka →B65G · Conveying & Material Handling
B65G accounts for 78 patent records (3% of IPC distribution), yet conveying and material handling is a primary commercial application of robot machine vision in logistics and manufacturing. The relative sparsity compared to the manipulator core suggests that vision-guided conveying systems — sortation, palletizing, and intralogistics — remain under-patented relative to their market deployment. Applicants active in warehouse automation or smart factory integration would find a less-contested prior-art landscape in this branch.
Search this in Eureka →How leading applicants differ by technology route
Route coverage across the main technology branches in the current evidence set.
| Player | B25J 9 · Manipulators & robots | B25J 19 · Manipulators & robots | B25J 13 · Manipulators & robots | B25J 15 · Manipulators & robots | G06T 7 · Image data processing & generation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MacDonald Dettwiler & Associates Inc | Strong · 19 | Strong · 22 | Moderate · 5 | Moderate · 10 | Absent |
| Samsung Electronics Co Ltd | Strong · 16 | Strong · 9 | Absent | Absent | Strong · 13 |
| ABB (Schweiz) AG | Strong · 28 | Moderate · 6 | Absent | Absent | Absent |
| Intuitive Surgical Operations Inc | Strong · 24 | Absent | Absent | Moderate · 5 | Absent |
| Zane Robotics Ltd | Strong · 15 | Absent | Moderate · 5 | Absent | Strong · 8 |
| Omron Corporation | Strong · 15 | Moderate · 6 | Moderate · 5 | Absent | Absent |
| Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories Inc | Strong · 16 | Absent | Absent | Absent | Moderate · 8 |
Frequently asked questions
The analysis covers 1,064 patent families in industrial robot machine vision. Note that filings from 2024 onward are under-counted due to the typical 18–24 month publication lag, so the true total for recent years is higher than currently indexed.
ABB (Schweiz) AG leads with 40 patent families, ahead of MacDonald Dettwiler & Associates (25), Intuitive Surgical Operations (24), Intrinsic Innovation (23), and Ocado Innovation (21). ABB’s focus is concentrated in manipulator and robot control classes.
Yes on a multi-year basis: the recent three-year filing window is 63% above the prior comparable window, consistent with a Growth lifecycle stage. Annual volume peaked in 2023 at 177 families and has eased since, but the 2024 and 2025 figures are further reduced by publication lag and should not be interpreted as a real decline.
The United States is the dominant jurisdiction, followed by China, Europe via the EPO, WIPO/PCT, and India. Canada, South Korea, Germany, and the United Kingdom also appear in the corpus. The strong US position reflects the geographic concentration of the leading applicants.
The most-cited patent in evidence is titled ‘Detection and reconstruction of an environment’ with 512 citations, followed by ‘Adaptive vision-based controller’ (323 citations), ‘Tele-autonomous system and method employing time/p…’ (319 citations), and ‘Object Pickup Strategies for a Robotic Device’ (262 citations). These citations highlight foundational work in environment reconstruction, adaptive visual control, and pick-and-place strategy.
Co-filing activity is minimal in this corpus. The only evidenced co-applicant relationship is a single patent family jointly filed by Mitsubishi Electric Corporation and Kyoto University. The field is largely characterized by single-organization R&D programs rather than alliance-based development.
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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.
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