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ROBOT INNOVATION: SURPRISING TRENDS BEHIND THE IP OF AUTONOMOUS ROBOT TECHNOLOGY

Chris Huffines, Senior Client Success Consultant

John Martin, CEO

Autonomous robots are disrupting large industries and propelling the development of entirely new product lines – from self-driving cars, to farming and mining machines, to manufacturing and domestic robots. IDC (International Data Corporation) projects the robotics market will reach $135 billion by 2019, with two-thirds of purchases coming from Asia.

CONTENTS

1 Executive Summary

4 Finding Relevant Patents

6 Top Company Filers

7 Autonomous Vehicle

Filings

8 Filing Trends by

Jurisdiction

10 Filings by Industry

14 Patent Landscape for

Domestic Robots

15 US Litigation Overview

and Trends

16 Non-Patent Literature

17 Conclusion

18 Author Bios

As new use cases and industries take hold, market incumbents must adapt to embrace new opportunities, or face threats from innovative competitors.

Consider the traditional lawn mower with its gasoline engine and mechanical drivetrain. Today’s autonomous mowers are replacing legacy parts and processes with location technologies, obstacle sensors, cloud communication, and a myriad of software components to control and coordinate its sophisticated features safely and reliably.

As such, companies will need to find new ways to maintain and grow market share through internal development as well as new partner and supplier relationships.

As this report shows, robotics patents provide valuable insights into which companies are innovating, what new

products are being developed, and where the technology state-of-the-art is headed.

Car companies have been extremely proactive in investing in autonomous vehicle research, with patent applications, partnerships and acquisitions driving the development of new products (see sidebar “Self-Driving Car Wars”).

• For example, Ford filed a patent for an automotive drone deployment system that covers flying drones scouting ahead for self-driving cars (US20160016663).

Related industries will be disrupted by the shift to autonomous robots as well.

• The automobile insurance industry will have to rethink autonomous vehicle liability and what products to offer, for example:

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Intellectual Ventures was granted a patent that enables drivers to choose the right insurance protection in real-time based on which mode of autonomous driving they have selected (US8595037).

• The parking industry will also be affected, with the need to create higher density (self-driving cars can park much closer together and end-to-end) and communication systems that direct cars where to park, among other innovations:

Hyundai filed a patent for a device that provides proximity information back to parking lot control systems (KR20140142444).

Chinese company Wuxi Puzhi Lianke High-tech Co. goes even further with a patent for mobile robot trolleys that automatically park cars (CN102535915).

• The delivery industry will also be upended, even if it takes many years for flying drones to deliver packages. The most expensive element of package delivery is the “last mile” to the business or residence. Having a robot drive the van and deliver the package could dramatically disrupt the industry’s economics.

Fatdoor, Inc.’s patent application covers

an autonomous vehicle that traverses a local neighborhood and delivers packages (US20140136414).

• The entertainment industry will also be impacted by drone-based camera shots and drone-assisted performances. For example, Disney has several patents that create aerial displays using drones with attached projectors and screens (US9169030).

Finally, entirely new industries and product categories will be created, such as:

• Survey drones that provide detailed aerial imagery of crops and construction projects (patent application KR101536095)

• Domestic robots such as Roomba’s autonomous vacuum, which has numerous models and nearly 1,000 active patents and applications

• Healthcare robots that support nascent mobile applications such as MIT’s foldable ingestible robots (see page 6).

While the United States historically has been the top jurisdiction for patent filings in robotics, Chinese-based patent applications increased more than 20 percent per year over the last

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Figure 1: Fatdoor’s neighborhood package delivery robot

(US20140136414)

Figure 2: Dyson’s autonomous cleaning appliance

(US20130061417)



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decade, with China passing the US in 2011 for most patent applications of any jurisdiction worldwide. Reasons for this include:

• Chinese companies and inventors are patenting more heavily.

• International companies – particularly US auto manufacturers – are scrambling to protect their robot-related inventions in China, due to lingering concerns about China’s IP legal framework and their ability to enforce and protect IP in China

• Chinese universities are pursuing a more aggressive patent filing strategy than their international counterparts.

• Patent litigation in the US is increasing.

FINDING RELEVANT PATENTS

The following patent analysis was derived from a series of keyword searches focusing primarily on sensing, processing and autonomy systems for any kind of autonomous robot. The focus was for self-directed, ambulatory robots rather than remote-control devices or stationary robots. These self-directed ambulatory robots require programming of their travel algorithm, continual awareness of their current position and environment, and software (either local or cloud software) that helps them “decide” where to go next.

In addition, patents with a large number of forward citations identified during the keyword searches were used as the seed text for a set of semantic searches. Patents were further refined by excluding expired patents and then family reduced. The final analysis consisted of 27,148 patents, including 13,829 active and 13,319 granted patents.

SELF-DRIVING CAR WARS

1999: The US FCC allocates

75MHz of spectrum to Dedicated

Short Rage Communications for

intelligence transportation system

communications.

2004: The DARPA “Grand Challenge”

offers $1 million to any team that

creates a vehicle that traverses a

150-mile course. No one wins the first

year, but five teams succeed in 2005.

2009: Google quietly begins its self-

driving car project.

2010: Audi and Stanford engineers

program an Audi TTS that

successfully ascends Pikes Peak in 27

minutes.

2012: A Google autonomous

car passes a 14-mile driving test

administered by Nevada motor

vehicle examiners.

2013: Mercedes and Infiniti release

cars with radar sensors and some

autonomous driving features.

2013: GM invests $258 million in Uber.

2013: The US National Highway

Traffic Safety Administration releases

a policy on autonomous vehicles,

including a 5-stage rating system for

different levels of automation.

2015: Tesla releases its AutoPilot

self-driving mode via an over-the-air

software update to Model S owners.

2015: Uber hires 40 Carnegie Mellon



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Many patent analyses will constrain the patent set using classification codes. However, this can be self-defeating when the goal is to find cross-over technologies and industries that threaten to disrupt an existing industry or product category. Since the goal in a disruption situation is to find unexpected but relevant technologies and potential new players, all classification codes were included.

Patents grants and applications spanned several use cases, with almost half in autonomous vehicles (such as self-driving cars) and one quarter that were general or niche in nature.

Use Case Patents

Autonomous Vehicles 15,558

Industrial 3,566

In-Home 3,380

Outdoors/Nature 1,216

Farming 628

Other 7,841

robotics researchers to work on

autonomous vehicles.

2015: Apple’s “Project Titan” with

hundreds of employees is rumored

to be creating an electric, potentially

self-driving car.

2015: Ford begins testing its self-

driving cars in California, Arizona and

Michigan.

2015: Mercedes-Benz showcases

a self-driving 18-wheeler truck on

German highways.

2016: GM acquires Cruise Automation

for $1 billion and invests $500 million

in Lyft to develop driverless on-

demand cars.

2016: Toyota acqui-hires Jaybridge

Robotics, an autonomous vehicle

startup spun out of MIT.

2016: Uber’s self-driving car begins

testing in Pittsburgh in January. Uber

announces a partnership with Volvo

to deliver self-driving cars (with a

driver as backup) by September. Uber

also purchases Otto, a self-driving

truck startup, for 1% of its stock.

2016: Apple invests $1 billion in Didi,

China’s largest ride-sharing company.

2016: Ford announces fully

autonomous vehicles (without pedals

or steering wheel) will be available

for ride-sharing by 2021. Ford

also acquires SAIPS, a self-driving

machine learning and computer

vision technology company, and

invests $75 million in Velodyne, a

LIDAR sensor company.

Figure 3

Figure 4: Data set divided by use cases



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Patents in the “Other” category include a number of interesting use cases such as a robot that plays games with humans (US2013/0103196 assigned to Aldebaran Robotics), a firefighting robot optimized for a high-temperature environment (KR100770655 assigned to DRB Fatec), and a public service moving-kiosk robot (USD563443 assigned to Samsung).

TOP COMPANY FILERS

Consistent with the top use case of autonomous vehicles, the top five filers are all related to the automotive industry:

Organization Patents

General Motors Company 514

Toyota Motor Corporation 458

Robert Bosch GmbH 448

Porsche Automobil Holding SE 379

Ford Motor Company 357

Alphabet Inc. 349

Honda Motor Co., Ltd. 302

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. 297

The Boeing Company 284

Hyundai Motor Company 284

QUALCOMM, Inc. 254

Continental AG 247

Denso Corporation 241

As the top non-auto industry company in the list, Alphabet (parent of Google) has invested heavily in self-driving cars and also owns robotic patents from its Boston Dynamics subsidiary, as well as hardware-related patents it purchased from Outland Research.

CREATIVE NEW ROBOTS: INGESTIBLE FOLDABLE ROBOT

MIT researchers have created a

foldable robot that can do small-

scale local surgery, deliver medicine

or remove foreign objects. The

accordion-shaped robot is folded

up and encased in ice, and then

swallowed by a patient inside of

whom the ice melts and the robot

unfolds.

From there, the robot can be directed

to travel to a specific spot in the

intestine via magnetic guidance, and

perform its assigned tasks. One of its

most important tasks is expected to

be to capturing and expelling button

batteries swallowed by children.

Once its task is completed, the robot

body and the control magnet can be

expelled normally.

The device is in the prototype stage

and expected to start animal and

then human studies on the path to

FDA approval in the United States.

The invention is protected by patent

applications US20160040657 (self-

folding machines), US20160016321

(systems and methods for

compiling robotic assemblies), and

US20140078699 (foldable machines)

– and other patent applications that

have yet to be disclosed.

Figure 5



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Figure 6: Top six organizations by Publication Year (2016 is for the first half of the year).

AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE FILINGS

The autonomous vehicle space shows a fairly steady increase in filing activity until 2013, when US and “Other” jurisdictions (primarily Japan) declined. On the other hand, filing in China trends sharply upward, with that country becoming the top jurisdiction in 2014.

Figure 7: Autonomous Vehicle Patent applications.

(Partial results for 2015-16 applications due to 18-month publication delay)

Top filer General Motors represents only 2 percent of the patents in the set, indicating a high number of patent filers in robotics worldwide. With so many companies expanding into these technology areas, the lack of any dominant patent filers implies that there will likely be many intellectual property collisions in the future.

The published patents of the top six organizations shows a dramatic upward trend over the last decade, and continuing into 2016. While General Motors was the top filer for several years starting in 2012, Alphabet leapt ahead in 2015 and has continued to extend its lead in 2016.



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The patent filings in Autonomous Vehicles encompass many different technologies and use cases, from steering to image processing to wireless communications. The text cluster below shows the most frequent filings phrases:

By contrast, patents for In-Home Robots include very different types of technologies and use cases, ranging from “cleaning robot” to “remote control” to “real-time”:

FILING TRENDS BY JURISDICTION

For most of the past decade, the US led the industry with the most patent filings for robotic innovations (based on application publication year), followed by Germany and other European filings. Filings in China were almost nonexistent as late as 2011, but growth in applications surged exponentially and in 2014, China took over as the highest-filing jurisdiction. In 2015, Chinese patent filings represented an impressive 44 percent of published patents in robotics globally.

Figure 10: Filing trend for total applications for the top jurisdictions, by publication year

Figure 8 Figure 9



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Within “Other” jurisdictions, Japan led in filings since 2006 and surged in recent years, surpassing Germany and other European countries in 2015. South Korea has also seen a steady increase over the last decade:

Figure 11: Jurisdictions within the “Other” category from prior chart

Top 10 Universities Patents

Beihang University 116

Harbin Engineering University 104

Southeast University (Jiangsu) 74

Jiangsu University 71

Nanjing University Of Aeronautics And Astronautics 64

Shanghai Jiaotong University. 50

Tsinghua University 48

Beijing University Of Technology 47

Chinese Academy Of Sciences 46

Industrial Technology Research Institute (Taiwan)

45

The university system is a key driver of patent filings in China. Of the top 10 universities filing patents in robotics, the first nine are Chinese universities (the tenth is Taiwanese):

Figure 12



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General Motors is typical of patent filing companies that are focused on China. The company increased its patent applications in that country by a factor of 15X between 2011 and 2015:

Figure 13: General Motors patent applications by jurisdiction and publication year

FILINGS BY INDUSTRY

To determine industry, the Top 50 filers were divided by related Standard Industry Class (SIC) code, and grouped in the table below:

Group SIC Code(s) Example Companies

Aeronautical 3271, 3812 Boeing, Raytheon

Heavy Equipment 3523, 3531 Caterpillar, CNH Industrial, Deere & Company

Electronics 3570, 3600, 3663, 3674

IBM, GE, QUALCOMM, Nokia, Intel

Appliances 3630, 3651 iRobot, Panasonic, Sony

Automotive 3711, 3714

GM, Toyota, Ford, Honda, Daimler, Tata Motors,

Honeywell, Magna International

Software & eServices 7370, 7372 Alphabet, Facebook, Microsoft

Figure 14



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Figure 15: Patent filings by industry and publication year

Every industry’s patent filings have grown over the last decade, except for Heavy Equipment. The Automotive industry has led all categories in patent filings, followed by Electronics, which are used in every robotics scenario. Software & eServices has had the most dramatic increase, while Electronics also increased substantially.

NEARBY TECHNOLOGIES AND COMPANIES

Innography’s semantic search can be used to find nearby technologies for an innovation or a patent filing (using “find more like this”). Unlike keyword or synonym search, semantic search looks for similar concepts and meaning behind words. In addition to finding hidden relevant patents, semantic search is often helpful for finding

technology use cases in adjacent industries, or to uncover potential new entrants into a technology area.

For example, starting with iRobot’s “Lawn Care Robot” (US8634960), the set of similar patent filings returned a variety of patents focused on robotic use cases: lawn mower, cleaning robot, remote vehicle, etc. Quite a few technological elements of the robotic lawn mower were also found: chassis terms such as mobile robot, robot body, and distal ends; actuator terms such as electric motor and drive wheel; sensor systems such as ultrasound, lasers and imaging sensor; and other features such as transmitting subsystem, GPS locations and real-time.



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Figure 16: iRobot’s “Lawn Care Robot” (US8634960)



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Looking at who owns these “nearby” patents reveals the incumbents in a specific area and potential new entrants, as shown in this Market Map:

Figure 17: Text cluster for patents returned by “find more like this” from patent

US8634960, “Lawn Care Robot”.

iRobot owns the most patents in this analysis of nearby patent filings, followed by Samsung and Honda. Continuing down the list, companies such as Deere & Company, Kubota Corporation, and Iseki & Co. are clearly working hard and innovating as well.

Figure 18



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For decades, the predominant technologies of lawn mowers were gasoline engines and drivetrains. Today, companies in adjacent industries including Husqvarna A.B. (sewing machines and other small household devices), Yaskawa Corporation (servos and welding robots), Robert Bosch (car components), and Intuitive Surgical (medical robots) are crossing over to

compete for their part of the lawn mower market share as well.

Traditional lawn mower manufacturers should invest heavily to innovate and protect their patents, as well as research patent filings to identify new potential technology partners and suppliers for autonomous lawn mower products.

PATENT LANDSCAPE FOR DOMESTIC ROBOTS

Innography’s PatentScape™ below shows the key topics in the domestic robot technology space, with color-coding to indicate where the top companies are concentrated. The closer each cell is to the center of a topic space, the more relevant its patents are to that topic.

As shown, there is significant company-level diversity within the topics. With the exception of Gentex and Magna in the Rearview Mirror topic area, no organization or small group of organizations dominates any topic space.

iRobot, despite being a robotic vacuum cleaner company, focuses heavily in the mobile robot topic space; the cleaning functions of its robots are incidental to iRobot’s true innovation. Conversely, Samsung focuses heavily in the vacuum cleaner space, despite its ability to fund and complete multiple projects.

Finally, the graphic shows a significant number of gray cells assigned to other companies, indicating just how many entities are competing in this space.

Figure 19



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US LITIGATION OVERVIEW AND TRENDS

Patent litigation in robotics is increasing at a high rate. The large number of cases filed recently in the Eastern District of Texas indicates that patent assertion entities (PAEs) are likely becoming

more active. The prevalence of cases filed in the Northern District of California are due almost exclusively to a private entity named SoftVault Systems, which also appears to be a PAE.

Figure 20

Looking at the litigation plaintiffs and defendants, two trends emerge. First, and nearly without fail, the top plaintiffs are small entities and the defendants are larger entities. In other words, small inventors and PAEs are consistently suing larger corporations over infringement. Second, some of these small PAEs are frequent litigants against multiple defendants. Given that this is a “hot” technology space that has been under development for many years, the presence of PAEs is not surprising.

Figure 21: Plaintiffs Figure 22: Defendants



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The litigation shows a relatively large number of losses to plaintiffs. More than forty-six percent of cases were dismissed by court order or voluntarily by plaintiffs, indicating that nearly half of the cases were probable losses, in whole or in part, by plaintiffs.

Figure 23

NON-PATENT LITERATURE

A review of non-patent literature (NPL) reveals documents focused heavily on autonomous and mobile robots, as well as sensor systems. More recent papers have focused on control structures and wireless sensors, showing the evolution of the space from getting robots to move and sense, to having more autonomous functions and distributed, decentralized sensor systems.

Figure 24: Robotic-related non-patent literature topics for papers

published 2013-2016.



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CONCLUSION

Autonomous robots are disrupting multiple industries and creating wholly new product categories and markets. Cross-over technologies are forcing incumbents to incorporate many new technologies and to find new partners and suppliers in order to capture market share in the new world order.

Patent applications provide a unique source of insights about companies’ R&D strategies and future product plans. The patent filing trends show that incumbents are moving quickly to create defendable innovations while new entrants are pushing their intellectual property into new use cases.

The huge growth of patent applications in China shows that country’s enormous market potential and the robotic innovation that is being driven by companies and universities in China. Companies should proactively monitor patent filings to track product innovations in China, be alert to emerging competitors, and to understand the technology state-of-the art in the world’s second-largest economy.

INTERESTED IN CONDUCTING IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS WITHIN YOUR TECHNOLOGY AREA OR INDUSTRY?

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ABOUT INNOGRAPHY

Innography provides patent search and intellectual property analytics software that helps the world’s leading patent owners, innovators and decision-makers drive more business value from IP investments. Correlating 100 million patent documents with financial, litigation, market and business data, Innography helps clients track competitors, uncover lucrative revenue sources, pre-empt litigation risk and stay abreast of innovation trends. With more than 350 global clients across all product industry categories, Innography is proud to achieve customer satisfaction far above the industry average. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Innography is a CPA Global company.

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AUTHOR BIOS

Chris Huffines, Senior Client Success Consultant

Chris Huffines is a patent and innovation specialist with experience in patent search and analytics, invention on demand, and law. He is currently focusing on client success, complex client proofs-of-concept, and developing educational content. Chris has led a team of professional inventors creating invention on demand and invention disclosures in a variety of technology areas, and is currently named inventor on 2 granted patents and 5 published applications. Before that, he was a practicing attorney focusing on intellectual property and complex litigation. He holds a B.A. from Texas A&M University and a J.D. from New York University.

John Martin, CEO

John F. Martin has over 25 years of experience leading and growing innovative enterprise software and SaaS companies, focused on emerging market segments. Prior to Innography, John helped drive 50-fold revenue growth in 10 years at IQNavigator, the leader in services procurement solutions for the Global 2000, successively as Chief Technology Officer, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Executive Officer of International Markets. Previously, John held multiple executive positions at Saba Software, including VP Product Management and VP Internet Services, as it grew from no revenue to over $60 million and went public as the leader in learning management solutions. John was also VP Convergence Technologies at CSG Systems, managing all open-systems product lines, as it went public and grew to over $200 million in sales. As a management consultant at McKinsey & Co. for four years in the United States and Europe, John led engagements to create and implement strategies to increase value for clients in a wide range of industries. John holds an MBA from Stanford and BS degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT.

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ROBOT INNOVATION - Innography · PDF fileself-driving car wars 1999: the us fcc allocates ... robot innovation | surprising trends behind the ip of autonomous robot technology white