Soft Robot Wireless Connectivity Patents: Who Leads, Gaps 2026
- Filing peaked in 2018 at 8 records and has not recovered. The midpoint year 2022 shows zero filings, pointing to a flat-to-declining trend rather than steady growth.
- Manipulator and actuator classes dominate the 54-family dataset. B25J and F15B together cover the bulk of records, while connectivity-adjacent classes like H10N sit in single digits.
- Academic assignees hold the most-cited art, not corporates. Harvard-linked filings anchor the citation table, with co-assignee pairs clustering around a small set of named inventors.
A small, academically-anchored field with stalled growth
The dataset covers 54 patent families filed between 2015 and 2026 that combine soft robotics with untethered or wireless actuation claims. Filing activity peaked in 2018 at eight records and has since thinned out, with the 2022 midpoint showing no filings at all — a pattern that reads as flat or declining rather than an early-stage ramp. Publication lag means the final 1-2 years are always undercounted, but the shape of the curve through the peak year is real.
Technology composition skews heavily toward core actuation and manipulator hardware rather than the wireless or IoT layer itself: B25J and F15B subclasses carry the bulk of records, while classes tied to solid-state electronics or telecom sit in single digits. Receiving-office data shows the United States and the PCT route carrying most of the volume, consistent with a field still dominated by university and early-stage filers seeking broad geographic optionality before committing to national phase.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 54-family dataset: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
A peak in 2018, then a flat line
From 2 families in 2017 to a peak of 8 in 2018, the trend gives no filings at the 2022 midpoint and none recorded in 2026 so far. Read the final years with the 18-month publication lag in mind — some 2025-2026 filings will not be visible yet — but the multi-year plateau through the middle of the window is not an artefact of lag.
Manipulators and fluid actuators, not the wireless layer
B25J (manipulators & robots) and F15B (fluid-pressure actuators) account for the largest shares of the 54 records, with F16L, B61B and B62D trailing behind. H10N, the subclass most associated with solid-state electric devices, holds only 5 records — evidence that the wireless/IoT connectivity layer is thin relative to the mechanical actuation art it sits inside.
Shares are the percentage of the 54 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Soft Robot Wireless Connectivity and IoT with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about soft robot wireless connectivity and iot and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records anchor the field
Resilient, untethered soft robot
A pneumatically powered, fully untethered mobile soft robot built from silicone elastomer, polyaramid fabric and hollow glass microspheres, sized to carry its own air compressors, battery, valves and controller for autonomous operation. The 0.65-metre soft body uses modified pneumatic network actuators rated to 138 kPa, able to actuate legs and carry payloads up to 8 kg while remaining resilient to adverse environmental conditions.Filed by President and Fellows of Harvard College, published 2015-12-31.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20140208731A1 | Systems and methods for actuating soft robotic actuators | 53 |
| 2 | US20150375817A1 | Resilient, untethered soft robot | 21 |
| 3 | WO2013103412A2 | Systems and methods for actuating soft robotic actuators | 19 |
| 4 | US20220069737A1 | Electrostatic-actuator-based, tunable, soft robots | 15 |
| 5 | US20180207814A1 | Distributed pressurization and exhaust systems for soft robots | 11 |
| 6 | US10451210B2 | Soft body robot for in-pipe missions | 8 |
| 7 | US20170030381A9 | Systems and methods for actuating soft robotic actuators | 8 |
| 8 | WO2017011438A1 | Distributed pressurization and exhaust systems for soft robots | 7 |
| 9 | WO2020112947A1 | Electrostatic-actuator-based, tunable, soft robots | 6 |
| 10 | US9945397B2 | Systems and methods for actuating soft robotic actuators | 6 |
Citation counts favour older filings within any searched corpus; treat this table as a signal of influence on later work, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three findings that shape how a freedom-to-operate or whitespace review should be scoped in this space.
Growth stalled after 2018
Filings rose from 2 in 2017 to a peak of 8 in 2018, then fell back with zero recorded at the 2022 midpoint. That is not the shape of a technology still attracting fresh capital into new filings; it looks more like a cluster of early academic priority claims that has not been followed by a second wave.
Mechanical actuation dominates the claim space
B25J and F15B between them cover most of the dataset, meaning the bulk of protected subject matter is soft-body manipulation and fluid actuation hardware. Wireless-specific classes such as H10N sit at just 5 records, suggesting connectivity is usually claimed as a dependent feature rather than the core invention.
US and PCT carry the volume
The United States receives the largest single share of filings, with the WIPO PCT route close behind — a combination typical of university-originated inventions kept open for national-phase decisions later. Europe, Australia and Canada each hold single-digit shares, and national coverage outside these routes is thin.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to soft robot wireless connectivity and iot, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space
The ranking is dominated by university and research-institute assignees, with recent-year momentum flat across the named organisations.
No assignee shows recent momentum
Every one of the leading assignees in the recent-year momentum table — spanning Harvard, MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, the Max Planck Society, Northwestern and Carnegie Mellon — recorded zero filings in the latest tracked year. That is consistent with the broader flat-to-declining trend rather than any one organisation losing ground specifically.
Inventor clusters, not corporate alliances
Co-assignee pairs are few and concentrated around named individuals rather than joint corporate filings — the strongest pairs link George Whitesides with Samuel Root, Anoop Rajappan and Daniel John Preston respectively. This points to lab-level co-invention within a single institution rather than cross-company partnership.
A small field led by academic priority filings
With only 54 families across more than a decade, this is a narrow, academically-anchored niche rather than a crowded commercial battleground. The most-cited records trace back to university labs, and no single corporate assignee has yet built a dominant filing position.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| President and Fellows of Harvard College | 0 | — |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | 0 | — |
| The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania | 0 | — |
| Max Planck Society | 0 | — |
| Northwestern University | 0 | — |
| Carnegie Mellon University | 0 | — |
| Dartmouth College | 0 | — |
| The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The trend and composition data point to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, licensing or new filing strategy.
Run a freedom-to-operate check on the cited core
The most-cited records, led by the Harvard untethered soft robot family, sit on pneumatic actuation and body-composite claims that any new untethered design should be checked against before committing to a build.
Check claims in EurekaTrack whether filing recovers past the 2022 gap
With the midpoint year showing zero filings and the trend not yet recovered, monitoring the next 12-18 months of publications — allowing for lag — will show whether this is a permanent plateau or a temporary gap.
Set up trend tracking in EurekaScope the wireless/IoT layer separately from actuation
Because H10N and connectivity-adjacent classes are thinly claimed relative to B25J and F15B, a targeted search on the wireless layer alone is likely to surface different assignees and a different competitive picture.
Build a targeted search in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
This dataset identifies 54 patent families published between 2015 and 2026 that combine soft robotics claims with untethered or wireless actuation language. That is a small field by patent-landscape standards, and it is concentrated around a handful of university-originated priority filings rather than spread across many corporate portfolios. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the true count for the most recent one to two years will be somewhat higher once those applications publish.
The recent-year momentum table is led by university and research-institute assignees including Harvard, MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, the Max Planck Society, Northwestern and Carnegie Mellon. None of these organisations show filings in the latest tracked year, which fits the broader flat-to-declining trend across the dataset. No single corporate assignee has yet built a dominant filing position in this niche.
The trend is flat to declining. Filings rose from 2 in 2017 to a peak of 8 in 2018, then fell back to zero recorded families at the 2022 midpoint, with no meaningful recovery visible through the most recent years. This does not necessarily mean interest has disappeared — some of the apparent drop-off in the final years is publication lag — but the multi-year plateau through the middle of the window is a genuine signal, not an artefact.
Most of the claim space sits in mechanical actuation rather than in wireless or IoT hardware specifically. B25J (manipulators and robots) and F15B (fluid-pressure actuators) together account for the largest share of the 54 records, while H10N — the subclass most associated with solid-state electric devices — holds only 5. In practice this means connectivity features are usually claimed as dependent elements of a soft-body actuator, not as the primary invention.
The thinnest coverage relative to the mechanical core sits in wireless power transfer for soft actuators, solid-state connectivity components under H10N, and IoT sensor integration within compliant bodies. These branches have far fewer records than the B25J/F15B actuation core, which suggests room for claims that treat the wireless or sensing layer as the primary invention rather than a dependent feature. Any filing strategy there should still be checked against the highly-cited Harvard and MIT actuation patents for overlap.
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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.