Robotic Lawn Mowers Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
- Concentrated at the top. The five leading assignees together hold 59.4% of all 1,336 records in scope, and the ranked ten hold 75.4% — a small group has occupied most of the core claim space.
- Filings peaked in 2020 at 215, then pulled back. Complete-year filings fell from 171 in 2021 to 73 in 2024, a -57% move over that span, though 2025-2026 figures are still filling in under normal publication lag.
- Control and navigation outweigh the blade. G05D control-of-non-electric-variables appears in 54.4% of records, nearly matching A01D mowing hardware itself at 58.9% — the harder claims are in how the machine decides where to go, not how it cuts.
Filing growth compares 2021 (171 records) with 2024 (73) — 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 1,336 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the robotic lawn mower patent record actually shows
Robotic lawn mowers sit at the intersection of outdoor power equipment and consumer robotics, and the patent record reflects that split. Roughly six in ten records touch A01D mowing and harvesting mechanics, but more than half also touch G05D non-electric control systems, and meaningful minorities extend into G01S positioning, G06V image recognition and B60L electric propulsion. A single mower design routinely spans several of these classes at once, which is why the composition figures add up to well over 100% of the 1,336 records in scope.
The filing curve rose sharply through the late 2010s, peaked in 2020, and has since pulled back to a lower but still active plateau. Publication lag of roughly 18 months means the most recent one to two years understate real filing activity, so the 2024 figure is the last one safe to read as a complete year.
Filing trends and technology composition
The charts below break down the same 1,336 records by filing year and by IPC subclass, giving a view of when activity moved and where the claim density sits today.
A 2020 peak followed by a real but overstated decline
Filings climbed from 35 in 2017 to a peak of 215 in 2020, then eased to 171 in 2021 and 73 by 2024 — a -57% move over that three-year span. Years after 2024 are still incomplete in the record and should not be read as a continued slide.
Mowing hardware and control logic dominate, positioning and vision are secondary
A01D mowing mechanics (58.9%) and G05D control systems (54.4%) between them cover most records. B25J manipulators, G01S positioning, B60L propulsion, G06V vision and A01B soil-working each sit in the high single digits, marking narrower but active sub-fields rather than white space.
Shares are the percentage of the 1,336 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Robotic Lawn Mowers with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about robotic lawn mowers and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records anchoring the field
US20250311665A1 — Robotic lawn mower with enhanced cutting properties (Husqvarna AB, 2025-10-09)
A robotic lawn mower includes a control unit and a first end portion facing a forward travelling direction, with a longitudinal mower extension between the end portions. When the mower, during grass cutting in a cutting lane, approaches a boundary, the control unit drives the second end portion through a first arcuate movement along a cutting arc so the mower extension sits mainly parallel to the boundary extension before continuing the cutting lane.Abstract trimmed for length; see the full record for complete claim language.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20220066456A1 | Obstacle recognition method for autonomous robots | 758 |
| 2 | US5204814A | Autonomous lawn mower | 686 |
| 3 | US20080039974A1 | Robot Confinement | 525 |
| 4 | US20210089040A1 | Obstacle recognition method for autonomous robots | 453 |
| 5 | US20200225673A1 | Obstacle recognition method for autonomous robots | 452 |
| 6 | US20080109126A1 | Lawn Care Robot | 261 |
| 7 | US11199853B1 | Versatile mobile platform | 246 |
| 8 | US11348269B1 | Method and apparatus for combining data to construct a floor plan | 245 |
| 9 | US11069082B1 | Remote distance estimation system and method | 225 |
| 10 | US11274929B1 | Method for constructing a map while performing work | 213 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate references — read them as a measure of influence on later filings, not as a ranking of current commercial importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three patterns in this dataset matter more than the raw counts: where citations concentrate, how co-invention clusters, and how far the field's growth has actually cooled.
Obstacle recognition claims carry the most weight
The most-cited records in this dataset are almost all obstacle-recognition and boundary-confinement patents, including one cited 758 times and a 1992-era autonomous mower patent still cited 686 times. New entrants filing on obstacle detection are filing into the densest prior-art layer in the field.
A small group holds most of the claim space
Ten assignees account for 75.4% of the 1,336 records in scope, with the leader alone contributing 240 records. A long tail of single- or few-filing entrants fills the remainder, which typically means peripheral or defensive filings rather than core platform claims.
Inventor collaboration is narrow and personal, not organisational
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, and the strongest pairing recurs 22 times around a single named inventor group. That points to small, stable inventing teams behind a large share of the filings rather than broad cross-company collaboration.
Growth has cooled from its 2020-2021 peak, not stalled
Filings dropped from 171 in 2021 to 73 in 2024, a -57% move that follows an unusually sharp 2020 peak of 215. That reads as normalisation after a filing surge rather than exit from the field, and 2025-2026 figures are still incomplete under normal publication lag.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to robotic lawn mowers, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space, and where momentum is shifting
The leaders in this dataset built their positions years ago; recent-year filing counts by assignee show most of them slowing rather than accelerating, which changes where a new entrant should expect friction.
One company holds nearly a fifth of the field outright
The leading assignee's 240 records dwarf the fifth-place total of 50, meaning the top of this ranking is not evenly spread — clearing the leader's core claims matters more than clearing any other single competitor's.
Even the leaders are filing less in the latest year
Recent-year momentum across the top-ranked assignees is uniformly negative, with declines ranging from -33% to complete drop-offs to zero. That pattern is consistent with the broader post-2021 pullback rather than any single company retreating from the field.
A handful of named inventors anchor a cluster of filings
The strongest co-assignee relationships in the dataset centre on one individual paired with several collaborators, each pairing recurring in the teens to low twenties. This looks like an active independent inventor group rather than a corporate R&D team, worth tracking separately from the named corporate assignees.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| The Toro Company | 4 | -33% |
| iRobot Corporation | 2 | -50% |
| Husqvarna AB | 1 | -91% |
| LG Electronics Inc. | 0 | — |
| Globe (Jiangsu) Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| EBRAHIMI AFROUZI ALI | 0 | -100% |
| Techtronic Cordless GP | 0 | -100% |
| Positec Power Tools (Suzhou) Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this analysis
The figures above set the boundaries of the field; the next steps are about testing a specific filing or design position against them.
Map a candidate claim against the cited anchors
If a new filing touches obstacle recognition or boundary confinement, check it against the highest-cited records first — that is where examiners and competitors are most likely to already be looking.
Explore citation trees in EurekaTrack the leaders' recent-year filings, not just their totals
Cumulative counts favour early movers; recent-year momentum data shows where the same companies are actually spending effort now, which is a better signal for where they will contest new filings.
Set up assignee monitoring in EurekaTest the under-claimed branches before committing to core mowing claims
Slope-adaptive traction, multi-zone docking handoff and soil-aware cutting adjustment show comparatively lower filing density than the core A01D and G05D classes, which may leave more room for a defensible first claim.
Run a white space search in EurekaCommon questions about robotic lawn mower patents
One assignee leads the ranked field with 240 records out of 1,336 in scope, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 50. The top five assignees combined hold 59.4% of all records, and the top ten hold 75.4%, so the field is concentrated among a small group rather than evenly spread across the 100 ranked companies. A new entrant should expect the leader's portfolio to be the primary obstacle in core mowing and navigation claims, with the remaining ranked companies covering narrower or more defensive positions.
Filings peaked in 2020 at 215 and have since eased, with complete-year data showing a drop from 171 in 2021 to 73 in 2024, a -57% change. That looks like normalisation after an unusually sharp filing surge rather than the field shrinking outright. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so the most recent years should not yet be read as continued decline.
Two IPC classes dominate: A01D, covering mowing and harvesting mechanics, appears in 58.9% of the 1,336 records, and G05D, covering control of non-electric variables such as navigation and path planning, appears in 54.4%. Smaller but active shares fall in B25J manipulators, G01S positioning, B60L propulsion, G06V image recognition and A01B soil-working, meaning a typical filing in this field usually combines mechanical mowing claims with navigation or control claims rather than covering either alone.
The most-cited record in this dataset is an obstacle recognition method for autonomous robots with 758 citations, followed closely by a 1992-era autonomous lawn mower patent still cited 686 times and a robot confinement patent cited 525 times. High citation counts inside a searched corpus tend to favour older filings that have simply had more time to accumulate references, so these numbers signal influence on later filings rather than current commercial relevance.
Relative to the dense core of mowing mechanics and general navigation control, sub-areas such as slope-adaptive traction control, multi-zone docking and charging handoff, vision-based obstacle classification, and soil-condition-aware cutting height adjustment show comparatively lower filing density in the IPC composition data. These branches sit adjacent to heavily filed classes like A01D and G05D but have not been claimed as thoroughly, which can leave more room for a defensible first claim, though any specific filing should still be checked against the individual cited records in that sub-area.
Research Robotic Lawn Mowers in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole robotic lawn mowers corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
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.