Tactile Sensing Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Concentration is modest. the leader holds 26 records and the ranked leaders' top 5 combined account for just 13.0% of all 818 records in scope — no single filer controls the field.
- Force and pressure measurement dominates the claim space. G01L touches 57.8% of records, well ahead of manipulator claims (B25J, 25.3%) and digital-processing claims (G06F, 19.7%).
- Filing has cooled from its 2018 peak. the field peaked at 66 records in 2018 and filings fell from 53 in 2021 to 29 in 2024, a 45% drop over that span, though 2025-2026 figures are still filling in.
Filing growth compares 2021 (53 records) with 2024 (29) — 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 818 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This review covers 818 published patent families filed or published between 2015 and 2026 that combine tactile sensing terminology with technical claim language around spatial resolution, hysteresis, wiring, readout, contact geometry estimation or calibration drift. That claim-level filter separates genuine sensing-hardware and signal-processing disclosures from patents that merely mention tactile sensor in passing while claiming something else, such as a surgical instrument or a general robot arm.
The scope spans force and pressure transduction, distributed skin arrays, robotic manipulators that consume tactile signals, and the surgical and diagnostic devices that reuse the same sensing primitives. Receiving-office activity concentrates in the United States, Europe and the WIPO PCT route, with meaningful volume also filed directly in Japan, China and South Korea.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 818-record corpus: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings ran at 43 in 2017, rose to a peak of 66 in 2018, and softened afterward: 53 in 2021 down to 29 in 2024, a 45% decline over that three-year window. The 2025 and 2026 figures (8 in the latest year) are undercounted because publication trails filing by roughly 18 months — read the recent years as incomplete, not as a definitive slowdown.
IPC subclass composition
G01L (force & pressure measurement) appears on 57.8% of the 818 records, making it the dominant claim category by a wide margin. B25J (manipulators & robots, 25.3%) and G06F (digital data processing, 19.7%) follow, with A61B (diagnosis & surgery, 17.2%) confirming that a meaningful share of tactile-sensing claims are written for medical devices rather than robotic hands. Because records can carry multiple classes, these shares sum to more than 100% of the record total.
Shares are the percentage of the 818 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Tactile Sensing for In-Hand Manipulation with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about tactile sensing for in-hand manipulation and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited prior art
Soft, compliant, high spatial resolution tactile sensor array
The filing addresses a trade-off familiar to anyone building a tactile skin: spatial resolution, flexibility, softness and manufacturing cost normally pull against each other. Its proposed design removes electronics from the sensing area itself and avoids time-division multiplexing between elements, enabling fully parallel readout while keeping the array soft and reshapeable to arbitrary surfaces.Filed 2017-08-03 by BIRZNIEKS, INGVARS DR (AU2017100903A4).
View full record| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5356064A | Apparatus and method for applying surgical staples to attach an object to body tissue | 1,858 |
| 2 | US5033291A | Flexible tactile sensor for measuring foot pressure distributions and for gaskets | 455 |
| 3 | US5060527A | Tactile sensing transducer | 403 |
| 4 | US5010774A | Distribution type tactile sensor | 397 |
| 5 | US20070257821A1 | Reconfigurable tactile sensor input device | 345 |
| 6 | US4526043A | Conformable tactile sensor | 293 |
| 7 | US4634917A | Active multi-layer piezoelectric tactile sensor apparatus and method | 260 |
| 8 | US5164558A | Micromachined threshold pressure switch and method of manufacture | 241 |
| 9 | US20030151589A1 | Configurable industrial input devices that use electrically conductive elastomer | 240 |
| 10 | US20120056846A1 | Touch-based user interfaces employing artificial neural networks for HDTP parameter and symbol derivation | 231 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had longer to accumulate them; treat this table as a map of influential prior art, not of current filing activity.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three read-throughs from the concentration, class and citation data that matter for where you file next.
No single company controls this field
The leading assignee holds 26 records out of 818, and the top 5 combined reach only 13.0% of all records in scope. That is a fragmented field by the standards of hardware patent landscapes — a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants sits behind the ranked leaders, which means freedom-to-operate risk is spread thin rather than parked behind one or two blocking portfolios.
Transduction claims are the crowded ground
More than half of all records carry a G01L classification, confirming that the core sensing-element and readout claims are the densest prior art to search against. Manipulator-level claims (B25J, 25.3%) and software/processing claims (G06F, 19.7%) are comparatively less saturated, which is where integration-level differentiation is easier to argue.
Volume has cooled from its 2018 peak
After peaking at 66 filings in 2018, volume fell from 53 in 2021 to 29 in 2024 — a 45% decline over that three-year window. Because publication lags filing by around 18 months, the low 2025-2026 counts are not yet a reliable read on whether that decline continues.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to tactile sensing for in-hand manipulation, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the field stays open
The assignee ranking spans 100 companies counted across 818 records — a broad set of research institutes, medical-device makers, electronics majors and robotics firms rather than a small blocking cluster.
A modest lead, not a monopoly
The top-ranked assignee holds 26 of 818 records — enough to be the largest single filer but far short of controlling the field. Fifth place holds 17 records and tenth place holds 13, showing a gentle, not a cliff-edge, drop-off down the ranking.
Most of the field sits outside the ranked leaders
The top 10 assignees combined reach only 22.1% of all 818 records, meaning close to four-fifths of filings come from outside that ranked group. For a competitive-intelligence read, that means tracking the leaders alone will miss most of the active filing.
Cross-filing is limited and institute-led
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, and the strongest of them link national research institutes with affiliated universities rather than commercial partners. Corporate co-filing across company lines is rare in this corpus.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Temple University | 0 | — |
| Kagawa University | 0 | — |
| Texas Medical Center | 0 | — |
| Director-General of the Agency of Industrial Science and Technology | 0 | — |
| INTUITAP MEDICAL INC | 0 | — |
| National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) | 0 | — |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 0 | — |
| Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether you are clearing a design or scouting a filing gap.
Run a freedom-to-operate check on G01L claims
With 57.8% of records touching force and pressure measurement, any new tactile transducer design should be checked against this subclass first, not last.
Search G01L prior art in Eureka →Track momentum, not just rank
Several leading assignees show zero filings in the latest year, which can mean a portfolio has matured, been divested, or paused — worth confirming before assuming continued activity.
Pull assignee momentum in Eureka →Scope the under-claimed branches
Calibration-drift compensation and contact geometry estimation carry claim-level search terms in this dataset but comparatively low filing density, suggesting room for a first-mover claim.
Explore white space in Eureka →Common questions about this landscape
The dataset ranks 100 assignees across 818 records, and the leader holds 26 records — a meaningful share but not a controlling one. The top 5 combined account for only 13.0% of all 818 records in scope, and the top 10 combined reach 22.1%. That spread means the field is led by a mix of universities, research institutes and electronics or robotics companies rather than being dominated by one or two firms, so a competitor scan needs to look well beyond the top few names.
Filings peaked at 66 records in 2018 and have declined since, falling from 53 in 2021 to 29 in 2024 — a 45% drop over that three-year span. That said, publication typically lags the actual filing date by around 18 months, so the low counts shown for 2025 and 2026 (8 in the most recent year) understate real activity and should not yet be read as continued decline. The reliable comparison point is the complete 2021-2024 window.
The dominant classification is G01L (force and pressure measurement), appearing on 57.8% of the 818 records, reflecting how central transduction and readout claims are to this field. B25J (manipulators and robots) covers 25.3%, G06F (digital data processing) covers 19.7%, and A61B (diagnosis and surgery) covers 17.2%, showing that a substantial share of filings target medical rather than robotic applications. Because a single record can carry several IPC classes, these percentages add up to more than 100% of the record total and should not be summed as if they were exclusive categories.
Relative to the dense G01L transduction claims, sub-areas named directly in the search criteria — calibration-drift compensation, wiring-density reduction, contact geometry estimation and hysteresis correction in soft sensors — show comparatively thinner filing density in this corpus. That does not mean they are unclaimed, but it does mean the claim space around them is less crowded than core force-sensing hardware. A first filer targeting one of these branches with a specific, narrow claim has more room to establish a defensible position than one filing a broad transduction claim.
AU2017100903A4, filed by Ingvars Birznieks in 2017, describes a soft, compliant tactile sensor array designed to achieve high spatial resolution without the usual trade-off against flexibility and manufacturing cost. Its key technical move is removing electronics from within the sensing area and eliminating time-division multiplexing between elements, which allows fully parallel readout of the array. For anyone designing a soft tactile skin, it is a useful reference point for how prior art frames the resolution-versus-flexibility trade-off, though its scope should be checked against the specific readout architecture you intend to use.
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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.