Surgical Robot Setup and Docking Patents: Who Leads Now 2026
- One assignee dominates the ranked field. the leader holds 120 records against a fifth-place figure of just 11, with a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants below that.
- Filings accelerated sharply into 2024. growth ran +720% from 2021 (5 records) to 2024 (41 records), the most recent year the trend can be read as complete.
- Claim activity concentrates on the surgical side, not the mechanical one. A61B accounts for 83.9% of the 305 records in scope, while manipulator-specific B25J classifications sit at 19.0% — a gap worth checking before filing.
Filing growth compares 2021 (5 records) with 2024 (41) — 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 this landscape covers
Surgical robot setup and docking spans the mechanical and procedural work that happens before an operation starts: positioning the patient cart, extending setup arms, planning port placement, avoiding arm collision, controlling table motion, and managing the draping procedure and operating room footprint around all of it. It sits adjacent to core telesurgery control patents but is claimed separately because the setup phase has its own failure modes — collision, misalignment, wasted setup time — that do not depend on how the instruments are actuated once docked.
The 305 records in scope run from 2015 through the partial 2026 year, with the strongest activity showing up from 2021 onward. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the last one to two years in any chart will look thinner than actual filing activity once the backlog clears.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 305 records: how filing activity moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
A sharp step-up, then a partial tail
Annual filings moved from 15 in 2017 to a peak of 45 in 2022, with the 2021-to-2024 span alone showing +720% growth (5 to 41 records). 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in due to publication lag and should not be read as a slowdown.
Surgical claims dominate; mechanical and software classes trail
A61B (diagnosis & surgery) appears in 83.9% of the 305 records, far ahead of B25J manipulator claims at 19.0% and G06F data-processing claims at 11.8%. A61G patient transport/care (10.8%), G09B training aids (9.5%), G16H healthcare informatics (8.5%), G05B control systems (8.2%) and G06T image processing (4.3%) each cover a minority of records, since most filings carry more than one class.
Shares are the percentage of the 305 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Surgical Robot Setup and Docking with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about surgical robot setup and docking and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe records other filings build on
US20240058031A1 — System and method for port placement in a surgical robotic system
A surgical robotic system includes a robotic arm, a computer, and a printing device. The robotic arm includes a surgical instrument and the computer is configured to calculate port placement locations based on an image of a patient and a type of procedure to be performed. The printing device is configured to print a template of the port placement locations on a transparent substrate for placement on the patient based on the port placement locations calculated by the computer.Filed by Covidien LP, published 2024-02-22 — illustrative of how port-placement planning is now being claimed alongside a physical templating step rather than as software alone.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US7806891B2 | Repositioning and reorientation of master/slave relationship in minimally invasive telesurgery | 3,154 |
| 2 | US6788018B1 | Ceiling and floor mounted surgical robot set-up arms | 2,046 |
| 3 | US7087049B2 | Repositioning and reorientation of master/slave relationship in minimally invasive telesurgery | 1,457 |
| 4 | US6659939B2 | Cooperative minimally invasive telesurgical system | 843 |
| 5 | US6459926B1 | Repositioning and reorientation of master/slave relationship in minimally invasive telesurgery | 843 |
| 6 | US20200138534A1 | Surgical Robotic System | 696 |
| 7 | US8666544B2 | Cooperative minimally invasive telesurgical system | 665 |
| 8 | US20020128552A1 | Repositioning and reorientation of master/slave relationship in minimally invasive telesurgery | 625 |
| 9 | US8489235B2 | Cooperative minimally invasive telesurgical system | 563 |
| 10 | US20030109780A1 | Methods and apparatus for surgical planning | 511 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside a searched corpus; treat them as a signal of influence on later filings, not as a measure of current commercial importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the data indicates
Three read-throughs from the filing trend, the citation table and the technology split, aimed at decisions rather than description.
The setup and docking phase became patentable on its own
Filings grew from 5 in 2021 to 41 in 2024, well past the field's early years when 2017 sat at 15. That step-up tracks the point at which docking, collision avoidance and port planning stopped being described as incidental steps inside broader surgical robot patents and started being claimed as their own inventions.
The oldest master/slave repositioning claims still anchor the field
The most-cited records in this dataset are repositioning and telesurgical cooperation patents from the field's early years, one carrying 3,154 citations. Heavy citation of older filings is expected in a searched corpus and marks foundational influence, not current freedom to operate — newer filers still have to design around the mechanical claims those records established.
Surgical-procedure claims outweigh manipulator-mechanism claims
A61B classifications cover 83.9% of the 305 records in scope, compared with 19.0% for B25J manipulator and robot claims. That gap suggests setup and docking inventions are more often being claimed through the surgical procedure they enable than through the arm mechanism itself — a framing choice that affects where prior art searches need to start.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to surgical robot setup and docking, with the prior art for and against each one.
Leaders and the long tail
The ranking covers 32 companies returned by the data endpoint — it is the whole ranked list, not a top-50 or top-100 cut.
One filer sits well ahead of the field
The leading assignee holds 120 of the ranked records, against 11 at fifth place and 4 at tenth. That drop-off, rather than any single concentration percentage, is the clearest sign of how top-heavy this field is.
Recent-year filings are down across the named leaders
Covidien LP shows 1 filing in the latest year, down 88% year over year, while several other named assignees show zero filings in the latest year including drops of 100%. Given the roughly 18-month publication lag, this reads as pipeline still clearing rather than a genuine pullback.
Co-filing is concentrated around a small set of named inventors
Ten co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, with the strongest links all running through the leading assignee and named individual inventors or INRIA Rocquencourt, each appearing together four times. That pattern points to internal cross-team filing and a university-linked collaboration rather than broad industry co-development.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Covidien LP | 1 | -88% |
| Intuitive Surgical Operations, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Verb Surgical Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Intuitive Surgical, Inc. | 0 | — |
| INRIA ROQUENCOURT | 0 | — |
| Digital Surgery Ltd. | 0 | — |
| NIEBLER CHRISTINE | 0 | — |
| KUNZE HOLGER | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific follow-up questions rather than a single conclusion.
Check freedom to operate around the repositioning claims
The highest-cited records are master/slave repositioning and telesurgical cooperation patents. Any new setup-arm mechanism should be checked against these before detailed design work starts.
Explore citation networkMap the white space chips against your own claim drafts
The under-claimed sub-areas listed above are thin in IPC coverage relative to A61B and B25J, not empty — verify against full-text search before assuming open ground.
Run a white space searchTrack the leading assignee's next filings
With 120 records already held and recent-year counts still filling in, the leader's next disclosed filings will indicate whether the 2022 peak repeats.
Monitor assignee activityCommon questions about this field
Docking and setup patents claim the phase before instrument actuation begins: positioning the patient cart, extending setup arms, aligning with the operating table, and planning port placement to avoid arm collision. General surgical robot patents more often claim the instrument control, actuation or master/slave relationship once docking is complete. In practice many records carry both A61B surgical classifications and B25J manipulator classifications, so the distinction is about claim focus rather than a hard category boundary. Searching this space well means checking both angles rather than assuming a title mentioning docking covers only the mechanical side.
One assignee leads the ranked field with 120 records, well ahead of the fifth-placed company at 11 and the tenth-placed company at 4. That gap indicates a genuinely top-heavy field rather than several closely matched competitors. The ranking covers 32 companies returned by the dataset, including hospital-adjacent and academic filers alongside the commercial surgical robotics names, so the long tail is worth reviewing for niche mechanical claims even where the leader dominates by volume.
Filings grew sharply through the field's recent history, moving from 5 records in 2021 to 41 in 2024, a +720% increase, with a peak of 45 records in 2022. 2025 and 2026 figures in the dataset are lower, but that reflects publication lag of roughly 18 months rather than an actual drop in filing activity. 2024 is the most recent year that can be read as a complete signal; anything after that should be treated as still filling in.
The technology composition shows heavy claim density in core surgical (A61B, 83.9% of 305 records) and manipulator (B25J, 19.0%) classes, but much thinner coverage in areas like automated draping sequencing, setup-time analytics, and operating room footprint optimisation software. These are not empty categories, but they are under-claimed relative to the core mechanical and procedural classes, which makes them worth a full-text check before assuming the ground is open. Co-assignee data also shows collaboration concentrated around a small number of named pairs, suggesting fewer cross-company joint filings than the volume of the field might suggest.
The most-cited records in this dataset, including two repositioning patents each carrying well over a thousand citations, date from the field's earlier years simply because they have had more time to accumulate citations inside a searched corpus. This is a structural feature of citation counting, not evidence that older mechanical designs remain the state of the art. When assessing current relevance, filing recency and claim scope matter more than raw citation totals, especially in a fast-moving area like docking and setup where filing volume itself has changed sharply since 2021.
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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.