Soft Robot Process Automation Patents: Who Leads, Gaps 2026
- Filing peaked in 2021 at 16 records and has cooled since — the midpoint year of 2022 sits at just 3, so this is a field that surged and then went flat rather than one still climbing.
- Diagnosis and surgery claims dominate the technology mix A61B accounts for 17 of the classified records, ahead of printed-circuit fabrication (H05K, 13) and plastics shaping (B29C, 10) — actuator IP here is being built around medical applications first.
- The United States receives more than twice the filings of any other office 31 records land at the USPTO versus 14 at WIPO and 10 in India, meaning a freedom-to-operate check that stops at the US misses a meaningful share of the corpus.
What the corpus actually covers
The 68 patent families in this dataset sit at the intersection of soft robotics and the manufacturing methods needed to produce it at any scale — molding automation, scalable composite fabrication, and printed-circuit-style conductive patterning for flexible actuators. The search deliberately excludes soft-robot control theory and grasping mechanics that carry no fabrication claim, so what remains is process IP: how a soft actuator, sleeve or sensor gets made repeatably rather than how it behaves once built. Filing activity is concentrated in a five-year window centred on 2021, not spread evenly across the coverage period.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 counts in the trend line are undercounts rather than a genuine drop-off — treat the most recent one to two years as provisional. The technology composition also crosses conventional boundaries: bioreactor apparatus (C12M) and microorganism engineering (C12N) both appear because several fabrication routes for soft actuators borrow tissue-engineering and biomaterial processes rather than conventional polymer molding alone.
Let an AI agent run this analysis on your own technology
Pick a task. Every answer cites the patents behind it.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 68 families: when the filings happened, and which IPC subclasses they landed in.
Filings by year
Zero recorded activity in 2017 rising to a peak of 16 in 2021, then falling back toward single digits — a pattern more consistent with a research wave that has already crested than with an accelerating commercial land grab.
IPC subclass distribution
A61B (diagnosis and surgery) leads at 17, with H05K (printed circuits, 13) and B29C (plastics shaping, 10) close behind. The presence of C12N and C12M alongside conventional shaping and circuit classes signals that a meaningful slice of this art treats soft actuator fabrication as a materials-biology problem, not just a molding problem.
Shares are the percentage of the 68 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Soft Robot Process Automation with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about soft robot process automation and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe records other filings build on
Scalable manufacturing of sustainable composite materials with tunable thermoregulating properties
Methods for large scale fabrication of thermoregulating composite materials and parts comprising thereof are described, as well as methods for heat management using the same. The fabrication methods are easily scalable, highly modular, inexpensive, and capable of producing large area, thin, flexible films of any shape, and having tunable dynamic heat-management properties actuated via low energy input mechanical strain.Filed by The Regents of the University of California, published 2023-09-07 as WO2023168460A2.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WO2013033669A2 | Actively controlled wearable orthotic devices and active modular elastomer sleeve for wearable orthotic devic… | 82 |
| 2 | US20150088043A1 | Actively controlled wearable orthotic devices and active modular elastomer sleeve for wearable orthotic devic… | 82 |
| 3 | US20200296825A1 | Liquid metal circuits and methods of making the same | 41 |
| 4 | US20160049227A1 | Method of producing conductive patterns of nanoparticles and devices made thereof | 34 |
| 5 | US20200283121A1 | Elastic Shape Morphing of Ultra-light Structures by Programmable Assembly | 12 |
| 6 | US20220155506A1 | Deformable photonic materials and related methods | 9 |
| 7 | US20180215088A1 | Fluidic systems, devices and methods for inducing anisotropy in polymeric materials | 7 |
| 8 | US20210410283A1 | Biphasic material and stretchable circuit board | 6 |
| 9 | US20240271338A1 | Twisted coiled polymer artificial muscles and continuous textile manufacturing methods for the same | 4 |
| 10 | WO2017015750A1 | Fluidic systems, devices and methods for inducing anisotropy in polymeric materials | 3 |
Citation counts reflect influence within this searched corpus and skew toward older filings — treat them as a map of foundational art, not a ranking of current relevance.
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 stand out once the raw counts are read against each other.
Foundational orthotics IP sits at the top of the citation graph
The two most-cited records in the corpus — a WO and its US counterpart, both on actively controlled wearable orthotic devices with a modular elastomer sleeve — carry far more citations than anything else in the set. New actuator-sleeve designs are likely to be read against this pair during examination.
Filing strategy is US-anchored but not US-only
India's 10 filings and Europe's 9 are large enough that a freedom-to-operate review limited to the US and PCT stages will still miss a real slice of the corpus, particularly around lower-cost fabrication claims.
The surge has already passed its peak
Activity dropped sharply after 2021 rather than climbing steadily toward it, and several of the most active universities in the assignee ranking show zero filings in the latest year. This reads as a field consolidating around established claims rather than one still in a land-grab phase.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to soft robot process automation, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claims
University research offices dominate the assignee list, with collaboration pairs pointing to a small number of labs that co-file repeatedly.
Medical-center and university pairs file together repeatedly
The strongest co-assignee pair in the corpus links a medical center to a university research office across 7 shared families, well ahead of the next pairs at 3 each. That concentration suggests a single long-running lab collaboration rather than broad industry cross-filing.
Several top-ranked universities have gone quiet recently
Assignees that built up meaningful families earlier in the coverage window — including major US research universities — show no filings in the most recent year tracked. Some of this is publication lag, but the pattern is consistent enough across multiple assignees to suggest genuine slowdown, not just reporting delay.
Academic and hospital-affiliated assignees outnumber corporate filers
The assignee ranking is populated primarily by university offices and a medical center rather than device manufacturers, indicating that much of the fabrication IP in this space has not yet been licensed or spun into commercial-stage filings.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Cornell University | 0 | -100% |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 0 | — |
| Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center | 0 | — |
| Governing Council of the University of Toronto | 0 | — |
| The Regents of the University of California | 0 | — |
| Yale University | 0 | — |
| Purdue Research Foundation | 0 | — |
| Cornell University Center for Technology Licensing | 0 | — |
Where to take this
The dataset points to a field past its filing peak but still holding open branches. Two directions follow from that.
Check the fabrication-process claims before designing around the orthotic-sleeve art
The two most-cited filings in this corpus cover a modular elastomer sleeve construction that shows up repeatedly in citation chains — any new wearable actuator design should be checked against it directly rather than assumed clear.
Explore the citation network in EurekaTrack whether the 2025-2026 dip is real or a lag artifact
With publication running about 18 months behind filing, the apparent drop after 2021 needs revisiting once later-year data fills in — a premature read of decline could miss a re-acceleration already underway.
Set up filing-trend alerts in EurekaCommon questions on soft robot process automation patents
In this landscape, it means a filing that combines a soft robotics or soft-actuator element with a manufacturing or fabrication method claim — molding automation, scalable composite production, or conductive-pattern printing, for example. Patents covering only the mechanical behaviour or control algorithm of a soft robot, without a fabrication claim, are excluded from this dataset. That distinction matters because process claims and design claims are examined and licensed very differently.
The assignee ranking is dominated by university technology-licensing offices and one medical center, rather than device manufacturers, with a strong co-filing relationship between a medical center and a university research office (7 shared families). Several of the most active academic assignees show no filings in the most recent year tracked in this corpus, though publication lag of roughly 18 months means recent activity may still be understated. This is a research-driven field more than a corporate one at present.
Not on the current data: filings peaked at 16 in 2021 and had fallen to 3 by the midpoint year of 2022, with continued softness since. The most recent one to two years should be read cautiously because of publication lag, but the overall shape is a rise-then-plateau rather than sustained growth. Anyone benchmarking activity should compare against the 2021 peak rather than assume year-over-year acceleration.
The technology composition skews heavily toward diagnosis-and-surgery applications (A61B, 17 records) and printed-circuit-style fabrication (H05K, 13), leaving branches like bioreactor-integrated curing, tunable thermoregulating composites, and sterilization-compatible actuator materials comparatively thin. These adjacent areas sit close to the dense clusters without being directly claimed by them, which is usually where a narrowly drafted first claim has the best chance of standing on its own prior art.
The United States receives the largest share of filings at 31, more than double the WIPO PCT count of 14, with India (10) and Europe (9) also carrying meaningful volume. A freedom-to-operate search limited to the US and PCT stages would miss roughly a quarter of the corpus, so India and EPO filings deserve a direct check for anyone planning to manufacture or sell fabrication equipment internationally.
Research Soft Robot Process Automation in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole soft robot process automation 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.