Eyelash Extension Robot: Lash Studios and ABB Cobots

An eyelash extension robot has one of the fussiest jobs in beauty. It has to pick up a synthetic lash thinner than a thread, dip it in glue and set it on one natural lash, a few millimetres from a closed eye, then repeat that for lash after lash. Lash artists still do almost all of it by hand with tweezers. This post traces false lashes from sewn-in hair and spirit gum to the tweezer era, looks at the Luum robot studios in the news in 2026, and sets out where force-sensing ABB cobots could fit. That last part is a possibility, since ABB does not sell a lash robot.

A lash technician isolates one natural lash with tweezers and bonds an extension to it. Photo: Jameswasswa / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

From sewn-in hair to strip lashes and tweezers

The early history is rough. In 1882 the journalist Henry Labouchère reported that Parisians had found a way to make false eyelashes by having hair sewn into the eyelids, and in 1899 the Dundee Courier described the same painful method. Manufacturing came soon after. Karl Nessler, a hairdresser, patented a method for making artificial lashes in Britain in 1902 and sold them at his London salon from 1903. In 1911 a Canadian woman, Anna Taylor, received a US patent for false eyelashes made as a crescent of fabric carrying tiny pieces of hair. In 1916 the director D. W. Griffith had lashes of human hair made for the actress Seena Owen, fixed on with spirit gum.

The silent film actress Seena Owen, around 1919, three years after D. W. Griffith had false lashes made for her. Photo: Carpenter via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

For most of the twentieth century a false lash was a strip that you glued along the lid yourself and peeled off at night. Vogue was writing about them in the 1930s. In the 1960s the fashion went further, with strips on both the top and bottom lids to give a doll-like look, the style you can see in many photographs from that decade. Strip lashes stayed cheap and quick, and they still fill shelves in pharmacies and night markets. In 2014 Katy Stoka added another variant, the magnetic false lash.

A woman wearing false eyelashes, photographed in 1966. Photo: Fortepan via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Semi-permanent extensions changed the work. Here a technician glues single synthetic lashes onto single natural lashes with semi-permanent adhesive, while the client lies still with pads taped under the eyes. A full set can take up to two hours and lasts three to four weeks. The artist picks length, curl, colour and thickness for each eye shape, and in the US each state sets its own licensing rules. The first robot came out of California. Luum was founded in 2017 by Kurt Amundson, Nathan Harding and Tai Hsia, and by 2021 it was applying lashes to paying customers at its Lash Lab in Oakland.

Extensions are glued one at a time onto single natural lashes while the client lies still. Photo: Jameswasswa / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Luum's lash robots in 2026 and where ABB fits

Fortune reported on 9 September 2026 that Luum has now raised 36 million dollars. Harding previously co-founded Ekso Bionics, which builds exoskeletons for stroke and spinal cord patients, and that background shows in the safety design. Luum says its arm physically cannot touch closed eyelids, and the soft wands that handle the lashes are held on by magnets weak enough that they pop off if the client flinches or someone bumps the machine. The robot now works on both eyes at once and finishes a set in about an hour, against 90 minutes to two hours by hand. A human artist still preps the client, agrees the look and does the finishing.

An upper body exoskeleton at Ekso Bionics in Richmond, California, during a 2020 visit by Rep. Mark DeSaulnier. Luum co-founder Nathan Harding also co-founded Ekso. Photo: Office of Mark DeSaulnier via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Luum runs studios in Dallas, Newport Beach and Oakland and has machines inside some Nordstrom and Ulta stores. It employs three or four lash artists per robot so a machine can run all day, and Fortune says it has about 150 terabytes of session data for training its AI. In 2024 TIME listed the robot among its best inventions, noting soft tipped plastic tools in place of sharp instruments and a full set priced at 170 dollars. ABB is not part of any of this. The ABB arm best suited to close contact work is the GoFa CRB 15000 cobot, which has torque sensors in every joint, stops when it feels contact and can be taught by moving the arm by hand.

ABB's GoFa cobot is guided by hand and stops when it senses contact. Photo: ABB

A lash cell built on ABB hardware would look more like the single arm YuMi IRB 14050, a small cobot that ABB sells for precise parts handling on a bench. In a lash cell it could hold the tool steady while a camera finds each natural lash, and ABB's SafeMove software could cap its speed and keep it inside a fixed zone around the face. Engineers would build and test that motion first in RobotStudio, and salon staff could adjust simple steps with ABB's Wizard block programming, the approach covered in control robots with no code. Nobody has announced such a cell, so this is a sketch of how the parts could be used.

Programming a single arm YuMi with Wizard on the FlexPendant. Photo: ABB

What lash robots still have to solve

Luum's chief executive Jo Lawson told Fortune that lashes are the company's beachhead. She wants to move into what she calls intelligent beauty services, naming eyebrow threading and shaping and microneedling as possible next jobs, and the company wants to cut a lash appointment to about half an hour. Not every artist is convinced. The Fortune writer asked her own lash artist, who has never used the robot. The artist wondered how a machine would handle hooded eyes, monolids and almond shaped eyes, which need custom designs, and she worried about safety and noticed that the online prices were higher than hers.

A lash artist at work. A human artist still preps the client and finishes the set in Luum's studios. Photo: Jameswasswa / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

For homes, a lash robot is a long way off. Working this close to the eye in a salon already needs a trained artist beside the machine, and a home device would have to manage the client, the glue fumes and the cleaning on its own. The international safety standard for personal care robots is ISO 13482, and a robot that works at the eye would be held to it closely. The near term looks more like what Luum is doing now: a robot in a store or studio, run by staff, with booking done online.

Trays of strip false eyelashes for sale at the Shilin Night Market in Taipei. Photo: Maya-Anaïs Y. / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

For the factories behind the beauty trade, the outlook is easier. Our post on ABB robots in beauty covers that side, from bottles to manicures, and lash trays and adhesives are the same kind of small, light product. The open problems in the salon are cost, safety approval and skills. A lash robot is expensive, every new eye shape needs more training data, and lash artists will need to learn to load, supervise and finish around a machine, the job Luum's three or four artists per robot already do.

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

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