Surgical Robot Force Sensing Patents: Who Leads, Trends 2026
- Filings have cooled since the 2022 peak. 839 records in 2022 against 530 in 2017 and a partial 40 in the latest year — a maturing filing curve, not a growing one.
- A61B dominates the claim space by a wide margin. 6,635 of 7,714 records sit in diagnosis-and-surgery classification, dwarfing manipulator (B25J, 1,046) and informatics (G16H, 824) filings.
- Momentum has gone negative across the named leaders. Every tracked assignee shows a year-on-year decline in the latest period, several down more than 80%, signalling consolidation around existing claims rather than a fresh filing wave.
Filing growth compares 2021 (743 records) with 2024 (450) — 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 7,714 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks patent families at the intersection of surgical robotics and force or tactile feedback — systems where a robotic arm, instrument or console senses load, grip or contact and returns that information to an operator or control loop. The search spans surgical robot, robotic surgery and surgical robotic system language combined with force feedback sensing, tactile sensor and haptic feedback terms, capturing both the mechanical sensing hardware and the software that interprets it.
Coverage runs from 2015 through the 2026 data cut-off, with 7,714 published records used as the base for the assignee ranking. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent one or two years in any trend line will understate actual filing activity.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 7,714-record corpus: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
A filing curve that peaked in 2022
Annual filings rose from 530 in 2017 to a peak of 839 in 2022, then declined toward a partial 40 in the most recent year. Read against the 18-month publication lag, the true current-year figure is higher than shown, but the multi-year direction after 2022 is down, not flat.
Concentration in surgical and manipulator classes
A61B (diagnosis and surgery) accounts for 6,635 of the 7,714 records, an order of magnitude ahead of B25J manipulators (1,046) and G16H healthcare informatics (824). Imaging (G06T, 554), general computing (G06F, 532), implants (A61F, 524), body-fluid devices (A61M, 322) and video communication (H04N, 183) each hold a smaller, more specialised slice — evidence that most sensing claims are being written as surgical-instrument claims first and robotics-mechanism claims second.
Shares are the percentage of the 7,714 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Surgical Robot Force and Tactile Sensing with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about surgical robot force and tactile sensing and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative and most-cited filings
US20220087748A1 — Surgical robotic system having grip-dependent control
Describes a surgical robotic system that generates control commands based on a user's grip on an interface device: tool actuation is driven by tracked interface-device motion, while the interface device itself is actuated to render haptic feedback derived from load data on a surgical robotic arm. Actuation is tied to a center of rotation of the interface device corresponding to the user's grip.Filed by Auris Health; published 2022-03-24.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20040243147A1 | Surgical robot and robotic controller | 2,306 |
| 2 | US7155316B2 | Microsurgical robot system | 2,209 |
| 3 | US20180168615A1 | Method of deforming staples from two different types of staple cartridges with the same surgical stapling ins… | 2,024 |
| 4 | US20180168625A1 | Surgical stapling instruments with smart staple cartridges | 2,017 |
| 5 | US20190200981A1 | Method of compressing tissue within a stapling device and simultaneously displaying the location of the tissu… | 1,932 |
| 6 | US9095367B2 | Flexible harmonic waveguides/blades for surgical instruments | 1,899 |
| 7 | US7930065B2 | Robotic surgery system including position sensors using fiber bragg gratings | 1,890 |
| 8 | US20140005702A1 | Ultrasonic surgical instruments with distally positioned transducers | 1,851 |
| 9 | US8120301B2 | Ergonomic surgeon control console in robotic surgical systems | 1,809 |
| 10 | US8423182B2 | Adaptable integrated energy control system for electrosurgical tools in robotic surgical systems | 1,741 |
Citation counts accumulate over time, so older records such as the 2004 and 2006 filings lead the table; that reflects influence within the searched corpus, not current filing activity.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once the filing trend, classification spread and citation table are read together.
A post-peak market, not an emerging one
Filing volume nearly doubled from 2017 to its 2022 peak, then began falling. Combined with the publication lag, this points to a technology area that has moved past its initial land-grab phase into consolidation around already-filed positions.
Claims are written as surgical instruments first
The overwhelming majority of records classify under A61B rather than the robotics-specific B25J. New entrants drafting pure mechanism or actuator claims are filing into thinner prior art than those drafting instrument-level claims.
Foundational art is a decade or more old
The most-cited records date to the mid-2000s, well before the 2017-2022 filing surge. Later filers have built claim scope around, rather than displacing, this foundational layer.
Every tracked leader is filing less, not more
Recent-year filings from the named leading assignees all show double-digit percentage declines, several reaching a full stop. That is consistent with a maturing claim landscape where incremental filing has become harder to justify.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to surgical robot force and tactile sensing, with the prior art for and against each one.
Assignees and where the field is thinning out
Filing momentum has turned negative across every named leader in the latest tracked year, and co-filing activity is limited to a small number of corporate-family pairs — a sign of a settled, rather than contested, ownership structure.
Mako Surgical still files the most, but is slowing
Mako Surgical recorded the highest latest-year count among tracked assignees at 10 filings, still down 81% year on year. Even the most active filer in this set is pulling back.
Covidien, Intuitive Surgical, Ethicon and Auris Health all pulled back sharply
Covidien LP, Intuitive Surgical Operations, Ethicon Endo-Surgery and Auris Health each show year-on-year declines of 90% or more, with Auris Health and Ethicon-Endo affiliate Ethicon reaching zero or near-zero latest-year filings.
Co-filing is concentrated within corporate families
The strongest co-assignee pairs link Smith & Nephew's own corporate entities — Smith & Nephew Inc., Smith & Nephew Orthopaedics AG and Smith & Nephew Pte Ltd Singapore — rather than cross-company joint filings, indicating internal IP structuring more than external collaboration.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Mako Surgical | 10 | -81% |
| Covidien LP | 3 | -90% |
| Intuitive Surgical Operations, Inc. | 2 | -93% |
| Ethicon Endo-Surgery (Ethicon LLC) | 2 | -91% |
| Auris Health, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Auris Health, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Verb Surgical, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Smith & Nephew, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this next
The trend and composition data point to a field past its filing peak but still concentrated around a small set of instrument-level claims.
Check freedom to operate against the instrument-class core
Given how much of the corpus sits in A61B rather than B25J, any new filing should be checked against surgical-instrument claim language, not just robotics-mechanism prior art.
Run a freedom-to-operate searchTrack the leaders' next filings, not just their history
With every named leader showing a year-on-year decline, a small uptick from any one of them would be a meaningful early signal worth monitoring closely.
Set up assignee monitoringExplore the thinner sub-areas before filing
Flexible-tip tactile sensing and vision-force sensor fusion carry lower filing density than the core instrument classes and may offer more open claim scope.
Explore white space with EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
Within this dataset, Mako Surgical shows the highest latest-year filing count among the named leading assignees, at 10 filings, though that is itself down 81% from the prior year. Other frequently cited assignees include Covidien LP, Intuitive Surgical Operations, Ethicon Endo-Surgery and Auris Health, all of which show sharp year-on-year declines in recent filings. No single assignee holds a dominant share of the 7,714-record corpus; ownership is spread across a long list of medical device and robotics companies rather than concentrated in one leader.
No. Filing volume rose from 530 records in 2017 to a peak of 839 in 2022, then declined toward a partial 40 in the most recent tracked year. Because publications lag filing by roughly 18 months, the latest one or two years understate true activity, but the multi-year trend since 2022 points downward rather than flat or rising. This is consistent with every named leading assignee showing negative year-on-year momentum in the latest period.
The large majority of records classify under A61B, the diagnosis-and-surgery IPC subclass, which accounts for 6,635 of the 7,714 records in this corpus. Robotics-specific manipulator claims fall under B25J (1,046 records), while supporting technology spreads across healthcare informatics (G16H), image processing (G06T), general computing (G06F), implants (A61F), body-fluid devices (A61M) and video communication (H04N). This split shows that most claims are drafted as surgical-instrument innovations first, with the robotic mechanism treated as a secondary claim element.
US20220087748A1, assigned to Auris Health and published in March 2022, describes a surgical robotic system that ties control commands to a user's grip on an interface device. The system actuates a surgical tool based on tracked motion of the interface device, and separately actuates the interface device itself to render haptic feedback derived from load data sensed on a surgical robotic arm. The claimed actuation logic is anchored to a center of rotation of the interface device that corresponds to where the user is gripping it, which is the specific technical hook a designer would need to work around.
Relative to the dense instrument-level claim space in A61B, sub-areas such as tactile sensor arrays on flexible instrument tips, grip-force-to-haptic calibration methods, multi-axis load sensing in cable-driven arms, and sensor fusion between vision and force data for autonomous assistance show comparatively thinner filing density. These are not guaranteed to be open, but they sit outside the heaviest-filed core and warrant a targeted freedom-to-operate search before committing claim language. The declining overall filing trend also suggests less new prior art is accumulating in these branches year over year.
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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.
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.