Tattoo Robot History: Edison's Pen to ABB Arms

The idea of a tattoo robot is older than most people think. The hand-held machine in nearly every studio descends from an 1876 Edison office gadget, and since 2016 designers and startups have mounted the needle on robot arms and computer-driven devices. This post follows tattooing from hand tools and the first electric machines to the Tatoué arm in San Francisco and Blackdot's automatic device in Austin. Then it looks at this September's argument over AI in tattoo studios, and at where ABB robots such as the GoFa cobot and the small IRB 120 could fit. ABB does not sell anything for tattooing, so that part is about what is possible.

A tattoo artist at work at the International Brussels Tattoo Convention, 2023. Photo: Miguel Discart / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

How tattoo needles went from hand tools to electric machines

For most of history a tattoo was put in by hand. Polynesian tattooists tapped pigment into the skin with a comb-like tool and a small mallet. Japanese masters used needles bound to a wooden or bamboo handle, a method called tebori, and photographers working in Japan in the 1870s, such as Baron Raimund von Stillfried, made portraits of men covered in full-back irezumi. Every dot depended on the artist's hand and on how well they read the skin. A large design took many sessions, and the result rested on one person's skill and stamina.

A man with Japanese irezumi tattoos, photographed by Baron Raimund von Stillfried between 1868 and 1880. Photo: Raimund von Stillfried via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Electricity changed the tool. In 1876 Thomas Edison patented his electric pen in Newark, New Jersey. It was a motor-driven needle that punched stencils for copying documents. In 1891 Samuel O'Reilly found that a modified pen could drive ink into skin, and he patented a tattooing machine with a tube and needle system that held an ink reservoir. Twenty days after O'Reilly filed, Thomas Riley of London patented a machine built around electromagnets from a doorbell. Alfred Charles South, also from London, later patented the two-coil layout that coil machines still use. Early coil machines were heavy, and artists often hung them from springs fixed to the ceiling.

Thomas Edison's electric pen, the stencil-punching device that led to the first tattoo machines. Photo: X-Javier / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

For decades the coil machine changed only in detail. In the 1970s Manfred Kohrs in Hanover, Germany, brought back the rotary design, driving the needle with a small electric motor instead of coils, which made the machine lighter and quieter. The first robot tattoo came in 2016. French designers Pierre Emm and Johan da Silveira, who had fixed a tattoo gun to a 3D printer in 2014, built Tatoué during a residency at Autodesk in San Francisco with Autodesk engineer David Thomasson. They 3D scanned the body part, wrapped the design onto the scan in Dynamo software and sent the path to an industrial robot arm. A person controlled the speed, and the client held an emergency stop.

Manfred Kohrs at work in his studio in Hanover, Germany, in 1976, using a rotary tattoo machine. Photo: Rolf Kohrs / Manfred Kohrs via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

Tattoo robots in studios today, and where ABB fits

Blackdot, a startup in Austin, Texas, turned the idea into a business. It came out of stealth in October 2023 and opened bookings at its own studio. Its device scans the skin, tests settings with dots the size of a hair, then stipples an artist's design point by point, and the artist earns a royalty each time a client picks that design. In 2025 Blackdot installed a machine it calls A.E.R.O., short for Artist Enabled Robotic Operator, at the Bang Bang studio in Manhattan. The company says its needle stays in the upper layers of the skin, above most nerve endings, so it hurts less than a normal machine.

A tattoo artist works on a client's leg at the 2019 Virginia Beach Tattoo Festival. Photo: Tony Alter / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Right now the argument in studios is mostly about software. On 9 September 2026 Euronews reported on how AI is changing tattooing in Europe. Hungarian artist Brigi Fuzes said about 70 percent of her clients now arrive with AI-generated images, and that many of those designs carry more detail than skin can hold over time. Edinburgh artist David Corden uses AI to clean up blurry photos of relatives that clients want tattooed, while other artists keep it out of their work entirely. The report also cited studies finding that 29 percent of Swedish adults aged 20 to 68 and 11.5 percent of French adults have a tattoo. So far the design step is going digital much faster than the needle.

A modern pen-style rotary tattoo machine, wrapped in plastic for hygiene. Photo: Myotus / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

No ABB tattoo project has been reported. ABB's arms still show what such a machine needs. The GoFa CRB 15000 cobot limits its power and force and senses contact through its joints, which matters when the workpiece is a person. The IRB 120 is a small six-axis arm, common in labs and classrooms, that repeats a path very precisely. A tattoo cell would combine a 3D scan, a path planned on a curved surface and safety zones set with SafeMove. The program would be built and tested first in RobotStudio, the same way ABB users plan robot painting and drawing.

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

What tattoo robots still have to solve

Skin is the hardest part. A human artist stretches it with one hand, watches it swell and bleed, and changes depth and speed as they go. A robot needs sensors to do the same, and Blackdot's CTO Yan Azdoud has said the company is working on versions that sense the distance between needle and skin better. People also breathe and twitch, so the machine has to follow the movement or stop at once. The early systems therefore used emergency buttons, slow speeds and simple line or dot work, far from full color realism.

Students program a small ABB IRB 120 six-axis arm. Photo: Peterantala / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

For most people the near future is a studio service. Nobody is close to selling a tattoo robot for the home. A client might pick a design online, have it fitted to a 3D scan of the arm and then sit for a machine while an artist supervises. Cost is a barrier, because an automated device has to compete with an artist whose main tool fits in one hand. Regulation is another. Tattoo studios are licensed for hygiene, and a robot raises new questions about who is responsible when something goes wrong.

Albertinodabologna works on a traditional tattoo at Horror Vacui Tattoo Parlour in Bologna, Italy, 2017. Photo: Technopop.tattoo / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Skills and taste will decide how far this goes. Artists in the Euronews report disagree about AI, and many tattooists see freehand work as the point of the craft. My guess is that machines take on repeatable jobs first, such as fine lettering and dot work, while artists keep the custom pieces. For engineers, the lessons carry over to other beauty and personal care robots: force control that is safe on a person, accurate paths on soft curved surfaces, and a simple way for a person to stop the arm.

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

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