Acupuncture Robot: From Bronze Figures to ABB

An acupuncture robot has to find a point on a living body that breathes and shifts, push a needle a few millimetres through skin at the right angle, then lift, thrust and twist it the way a trained hand would. That is harder than it sounds. This post follows that job from bronze teaching figures in Song dynasty China to the camera-guided arms now tested in Chinese universities and clinics. It also looks at moxibustion robots that hold burning herbs over acupoints, and at where force-sensing ABB cobots could fit. For ABB that is only a possibility today; the company sells no such product.

Steel acupuncture needles laid out beside a match for scale. Photo: Markgran / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

How acupuncture was taught by hand and by bronze

Acupuncture is usually traced to China around 100 BC, the time of the Inner Classic of the Yellow Emperor. Locating points was the hard part, and in 1026 the physician Wang Weiyi was ordered to cast two life-sized bronze figures engraved with 354 acupoints. For examinations the figures were coated in wax and filled with water. A student who hit the right point saw liquid seep out, and a miss stayed dry, so the figure graded needle placement on its own nine centuries before anyone asked a machine to place the needle.

A Ming dynasty bronze acupuncture figure in a museum display case. Photo: Gary Todd / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

For most of the following centuries the craft stayed in the hands. Japanese practitioners added the guide tube in the 17th century, a small sleeve that steadies a thin needle as it goes in. Moxibustion grew alongside needling: cones or sticks of dried mugwort burned on or just above the skin. Efforts to standardise acupoint positions started in the 1950s. In July 1971 the New York Times columnist James Reston had his appendix removed in Beijing and received acupuncture for pain afterwards. His article on 26 July, "Now, About My Operation in Peking", drew Western attention to the practice.

A traditional Japanese moxibustion set from Ibuki, with incense sticks for lighting the moxa. Photo: Wolfgang Michel / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Electroacupuncture was the first big step toward a device doing part of the work. Needles still go in by hand, but a stimulator passes small electric pulses between pairs of them, so the dose is set by a dial instead of by the wrist. Researchers then began measuring the hand itself. Ding and colleagues built a needle force monitoring unit in 2003 and an intelligent acupuncture robot that was tested on pigs in 2004. In 2017 Xu Tiancheng, a graduate student at Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, showed "Acubots", a camera-guided arm that had learned 300 of 362 points and was tried on about 60 student volunteers.

An acupuncture teaching doll marked with points at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo. Photo: Daderot / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Where the acupuncture robot stands today

Lab systems have moved from placing needles to copying technique. In August 2025 a Fudan University team published a robot arm-assisted acupuncture system built on a six-axis RealMan RM65 arm with a needle force sensor and camera tracking. It recorded an experienced acupuncturist's lifting-inserting and "mountain burning" manipulations and replayed them with a mean motion error under 0.2 mm. In a rat arthritis study at the ST36 point, robotic and manual needling both raised pain thresholds, with no significant difference between them. Beijing Institute of Technology has shown AcuFlexBot, a force-controlled arm that times insertion to the patient's breathing.

A patient with acupuncture needles in a hospital room in Qingdao, China, in July 1983. Photo: Michael Gäbler / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

Moxibustion is where robots are getting closest to everyday use, because holding heat over a point is easier than piercing skin. A 2026 paper in the Chinese Medical Device Journal describes a six-axis arm with an RGB-D camera that recognises several acupoints and applies moxibustion. On 29 September 2026 Dynamic Chiropractic described RealMan's RMC-HC, priced around $30,000, with autonomous acupoint recognition and adaptive force control, and a DeyeeRobot unit that offers moxibustion-style warming. At the CIFTIS trade fair in Beijing in September, the traditional medicine area showed a robot masseur and a smart pulse diagnosis device.

Two moxa cones burning on small stands on the back of a hand. Photo: National Institute of Korean Language / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0 KR)

ABB does not sell an acupuncture robot, and no source links ABB arms to one. Its collaborative GoFa CRB 15000 is still a reasonable fit for research. It has torque sensors in all six joints, stops when it feels unexpected contact, and can be taught by moving the arm by hand, which is how an acupuncturist could record a technique. SafeMove sets speed and zone limits around the patient, and ABB's force control software is already used for pressing and polishing tasks. Our post on ABB robots and massage covers the related job of pressing on muscles.

Moving a GoFa cobot arm by hand. Torque sensors in its joints let it feel the push. Photo: ABB

What comes next for robotic needling and moxibustion

The next few years are likely to bring more moxibustion and acupoint-finding systems into Chinese clinics before needling robots leave the lab. Bodies move with every breath, skin and fascia vary from person to person, and the "deqi" sensation that acupuncturists look for is tied to how tissue grips the needle. That is a force signal, and the Fudan sensor already measures it, but turning it into a reliable control rule is unfinished work. Most published tests are still on silicone, rats or small groups of volunteers.

Moxa cones set out in a tray, ready for a moxibustion session. Photo: National Institute of Korean Language / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0 KR)

For homes, the near-term product is more likely a heat or massage device with acupoint mapping than a robot that pierces skin unsupervised. Safety approval for an autonomous needle device would be far stricter than for a warming arm, and back in 2017 Liu Baoyan of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences said it was "too early to tell" whether Acubots could succeed. Cost is another limit. A clinic that already pays a skilled practitioner gets little from a $30,000 arm unless it treats more patients or records technique for teaching.

A GoFa cobot at ABB's healthcare research hub. Photo: ABB

Factories and research labs are where industrial arms will likely contribute first. A cobot such as GoFa could serve as a repeatable test rig for needle insertion, a teaching tool that replays a master's technique, or a holder for moxibustion heads in a supervised clinic. Programs like these are normally built and checked in RobotStudio before they touch a person. Someone still has to know where the points are. My guess is that robots will end up doing what Wang Weiyi's bronze figures did, checking a student's needle work, long before they treat patients alone.

An ABB GoFa CRB 15000 cobot at a work table. Photo: ABB

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