Video of the Day: Industrial robots are doing tattoos now

(Image via Appropriate Audiences/Vimeo)(Image via Appropriate Audiences/Vimeo)

Yes, that’s an industrial robot tattooing a human leg.

A team of Parisian designers under the name Appropriate Audiences has revealed the latest in robotic technology — a robotic tattoo machine. The technology, three years in the making, evolved from a design school workshop and even transformed into a desktop 3D printer at one point.

Designers Pierre Emm and Johan da Silveira wanted the machine to create real tattoos though, on real skin, so they kept working on the project, recruiting help from teachers and students along the way.

They borrowed a manual tattoo-machine from a tattoo artist and found artificial skin to experiment on, but eventually needed to work on a real human.

One of the biggest challenges they faced was repeating the same exercise on a curved surface and on a material that has much more flexibility than silicone. One trick they employed was tightening the area around the skin with a metal ring, elastics, or scotch tape.

For the robot to prove successful, all of the duo’s measurements needed to be precise and calculated. Well, they were successful and that’s when they decided to transform an industrial robot into a tattoo artist.

“We’re always looking at different tools and how those tools might be used differently,” said Emm.

Watch it here.

https://vimeo.com/175491863

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