The world's first industrial robot tattoo robot has been created by French designers Pierre Emm and Johan da Silveira (otherwise known as Appropriate Audiences).
(Industrial robot tattoo artist video)
As the video explains, the process of tattooing by robot has a few steps. You've got to create a 3D scan of the target area, mock up the desired tattoo using custom computer software, and then (as we mentioned before) make sure the recipient stays very, very still. After all, industrial robots are incredibly precise, but most models are not at all responsive. That's why people are killed (very infrequently) by industrial robots: if you get in the way, they don't know to stop.
You've got to say, though, the finished product is very, very neat.
The first time I was exposed to the idea of a tattoo robot was in the 1997 movie Starship Troopers (made from Robert Heinlein's 1959 novel Starship Troopers). Heinlein does not describe a tattoo robot in the book.
Tactile Skin Supplier Map
'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!' - Ray Cummings, 1931.
DIY Robot Scorpion Crushes It
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.' - Neal Asher, 2008.
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Tactile Skin Supplier Map
'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
Orb Nomad Zero-Emission Electric Aircraft
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
DIY Robot Scorpion Crushes It
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'