Soft Exosuit Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- One assignee dominates the field. the leading filer holds 84 records against a fifth-place count of 5 and a tenth-place count of 3 — a steep drop-off rather than a gradual taper.
- Filing activity surged then stalled. growth ran +1200% from 2021 (1 filing) to a 2024 peak of 13, the last year the trend can be read as complete given publication lag.
- Claims cluster in physical therapy, not control software. 59.3% of the 118 records sit in A61H (physical therapy & massage) while only 3.4% touch G05B (control & regulating systems).
Filing growth compares 2021 (1 records) with 2024 (13) — 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.
What the dataset covers
This landscape draws on 118 published records filed between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine soft exosuit or textile wearable robot terminology with cable-driven actuation, anchor points, misalignment compensation, metabolic cost, textile anchoring or sensor embedding. The scope is deliberately narrow: it isolates textile-based, cable-actuated assistive devices from the broader rigid-exoskeleton literature, so counts here should not be read against exoskeleton patent totals more generally. Families, not raw document counts, are the fairer comparison unit across jurisdictions, and the assignee ranking below is already expressed in that unit.
Filing offices skew toward the United States (44 records) and Europe (36 through the EPO, plus 8 through Germany directly), with a further 17 routed through the WIPO PCT system and smaller counts in Austria and Canada. That distribution points to a field still concentrated in academic and early-commercial filers protecting priority in their home markets before deciding where else to pursue grant.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 118-record set: filings by year, and the IPC subclasses those filings carry.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Annual filings ran from 8 in 2017 to a peak of 13 in 2024, with 2021 as a low point at 1 filing before the run-up. 2025 and 2026 figures are shown but understated, since publication typically lags filing by around 18 months.
IPC subclass composition
A61H (physical therapy & massage) appears on 59.3% of the 118 records, followed by A61F (implants & prostheses) at 44.9% and A61B (diagnosis & surgery) at 36.4%. Because records can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares sum to well over 100% and should be read as overlap, not as a partition of the field.
Shares are the percentage of the 118 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Soft Exosuits and Textile Wearable Robots with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about soft exosuits and textile wearable robots and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records in this set
Soft exosuit for assistance with human motion (CA2885228A1)
The filing describes a system for generating force about one or more joints using a soft exosuit built from a plurality of anchor elements and at least one connection element between them. A sensor measures force at the connection element or anchor elements and reports it to a controller, which actuates an actuator to change tension in the suit in response — a closed-loop, textile-anchored force-transmission architecture rather than a rigid frame.Filed 2014-07-17 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; representative of the earliest and most-cited filings in this set.
View full record| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20170202724A1 | Assistive Flexible Suits, Flexible Suit Systems, and Methods for Making and Control Thereof to Assist Human M… | 305 |
| 2 | US20160107309A1 | Soft Exosuit for Assistance with Human Motion | 288 |
| 3 | US20150173993A1 | Soft exosuit for assistance with human motion | 263 |
| 4 | WO2014194257A1 | Soft exosuit for assistance with human motion | 133 |
| 5 | WO2014109799A1 | Soft exosuit for assistance with human motion | 117 |
| 6 | WO2015088863A2 | Assistive flexible suits, flexible suit systems, and methods for making and control thereof to assist human m… | 95 |
| 7 | US9351900B2 | Soft exosuit for assistance with human motion | 91 |
| 8 | US20170027735A1 | Orthopedic Device Including Protruding Members | 90 |
| 9 | US20160346156A1 | Systems, methods, and devices for assisting walking for developmentally-delayed toddlers | 77 |
| 10 | WO2015157731A1 | Orthopedic device including protruding members | 64 |
Citation counts favour older records simply by virtue of being searchable longer — treat them as a signal of influence within this corpus, not as a measure of current technical importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once citation counts, filing trend and IPC composition are read together.
One filer, then a steep drop
The leading assignee holds 84 of the records in the ranked set, while fifth place holds only 5 and tenth place just 3. This is not a gradually tapering field of comparable competitors — it is one heavily invested filer surrounded by a long tail of smaller programmes, several tied to specific inventors or single institutions.
A sharp but recent run-up
Filings grew from 1 in 2021 to 13 in 2024, the fastest expansion in the trend window. Recent-year momentum by individual assignee shows several major filers at 0 in the latest year, which given the 18-month publication lag likely reflects filings still working through the pipeline rather than a real pullback.
Therapy framing dominates claims
Physical therapy and massage (A61H) framing appears far more often than control-systems framing (G05B, 3.4%) or educational-aid framing (G09B, 5.1%). Most drafted claims describe the mechanical and physiological effect of the suit rather than the control algorithm that drives it.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to soft exosuits and textile wearable robots, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the activity has cooled
The ranked assignee list is dominated by university and research-institute programmes rather than product companies, with co-filing patterns showing named inventors tied closely to the leading institution.
A single research programme anchors the field
The top-ranked assignee accounts for the large majority of records in this set, with strong co-assignee pairings to individually named inventors appearing repeatedly at a strength of 5 shared filings each — consistent with a long-running lab programme rather than a diffuse commercial market.
Smaller institutional and individual filers
Beyond the leader, the ranking includes university research corporations, a technology foundation and individually named inventor-assignees, each holding a handful of records. Fifth place sits at 5 records and tenth place at just 3.
Recent-year activity looks paused, not stopped
Several major assignees show 0 filings in the latest recorded year, with year-over-year drops of -100% for some. Given the roughly 18-month gap between filing and publication, this is best read as a data-visibility gap rather than firms exiting the field.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| President and Fellows of Harvard College | 0 | — |
| Georgia Tech Research Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| DE ROSSI STEFANO MARCO MARIA | 0 | — |
| Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg (University of Heidelberg) | 0 | -100% |
| Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia | 0 | — |
| Nanyang Technological University | 0 | — |
| YARRI MATTHEW W | 0 | — |
| UNIV DEGLI STUDI DI GENOVA | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a field with one dominant filer, a steep but recent growth curve, and claim density that clusters in therapy framing rather than control systems.
Check freedom-to-operate against the leading filer
With one assignee holding 84 of 118 records and dense co-assignee ties to specific named inventors, any new filing on anchor-point or force-sensing architecture should be checked directly against that portfolio first.
Run a freedom-to-operate search in EurekaDraft toward the control-systems gap
G05B coverage sits at just 3.4% of records, well below the mechanical and therapy-framed classes. A claim written around the control loop rather than the textile mechanism may face a thinner prior-art field.
Explore white space with EurekaTrack the post-2024 filings as they publish
2025 and 2026 filings are still emerging under the 18-month publication lag. Re-running this trend in a year will show whether the 2024 peak was a step-change or a spike.
Set up monitoring in EurekaCommon questions on soft exosuit patents
One assignee, a university research programme, holds 84 of the 118 records in this dataset — a very large lead over the rest of the ranked field, where fifth place sits at only 5 records and tenth place at 3. This is a concentrated field rather than one with several comparably sized commercial competitors. The other ranked assignees are mostly universities, a research foundation and individually named inventors, several of whom co-file with the leading institution.
Filings grew sharply from 1 in 2021 to a peak of 13 in 2024, a +1200% increase over that span, and 2024 is the most recent year that can be treated as a complete data point. Figures for 2025 and 2026 look lower, but that is expected: publication typically lags actual filing by about 18 months, so recent years are still filling in. Nothing in this trend supports describing the field as slowing yet.
Physical therapy and massage framing (IPC class A61H) appears on 59.3% of the 118 records, followed by implants and prostheses framing (A61F) at 44.9% and diagnosis/surgery framing (A61B) at 36.4%. Manipulator and robotics framing (B25J) covers 31.4%. Control and regulating systems (G05B) appears on only 3.4% of records, suggesting the control-algorithm side of these devices is claimed far less densely than the mechanical and physiological effect side.
CA2885228A1, assigned to the President and Fellows of Harvard College, describes a system with a plurality of textile anchor elements and a connection element between them, a sensor that measures force at the anchor or connection points, and a controller that actuates an actuator to adjust suit tension based on that sensor feedback. It is one of the most-cited records in this dataset and represents an early, foundational architecture for closed-loop, textile-anchored force transmission. Anyone drafting claims around anchor-point sensing and tension control in a soft exosuit should review its specific claim scope directly.
The clearest gap by IPC composition is control and regulating systems (G05B) at 3.4% of records, alongside comparatively light coverage of educational or training-aid applications (G09B) at 5.1% and sports/gymnastics framing (A63B) at 13.6%. Sub-areas like metabolic-cost feedback loops, misalignment-compensation geometry and cable-driven actuation for upper-limb assistance are also worth checking, since they sit at the edges of current claim density rather than in the dense A61H/A61F core. A freedom-to-operate search against the leading assignee's portfolio is still advisable before drafting in any of these areas.
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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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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.