Robotics Operating Dermatology System · Hong Kong
Precision that doesn't depend on a steady hand.
RODS builds vision-guided robots for aesthetic laser treatment. The arm reconstructs the face in three dimensions, plans a non-overlapping shot pattern around the eyes and lips, and holds the handpiece at a fixed distance while a thermal sensor watches the skin respond — every pass, every patient.
- Points
- 0
- Region
- READY
- Standoff
- 118 mm
- Surface
- 36.4 °C
- Coverage
- 0.0 %
The problem
A treatment is only as even as the hand holding the handpiece.
Each pulse is over in a fraction of a second and leaves nothing on the skin to see. The operator cannot tell where energy has already landed, so passes drift: gaps in one area, overlap in another. One side of a face is under-treated while the other takes a double dose, and after a full day of repetitive passes the drift gets wider.
Mean laser coverage achieved by a trained practitioner in a single non-overlapping pass.
The same pass, same laser, performed by the RODS manipulator (p < 0.01).
Short- or long-term adverse events recorded across the trial cohort.
How it works
See the surface. Plan the dose. Hold the distance. Measure the response.
Reconstruct the face
A structured-light depth camera on the arm builds the face as a point cloud — 3D coordinates, colour and surface intensity for every point. No two faces are treated from the same model.
Segment and route
The surface is divided into seven treatment regions. The operator selects which to treat; the system fills each with a non-overlapping shot pattern and routes around the eyes, brows, lips and hairline.
Hold the standoff
The arm keeps the handpiece a constant distance from a curved, moving surface while it fires, so the fluence reaching the skin stays the fluence that was set.
Watch the skin
A thermal sensor reads the treated area throughout the pass and the session is logged shot by shot — a record the clinic can hand back to the patient.
Clinical evidence
Tested against a practitioner, on the same face, on the same day.
A prospective split-face trial enrolled 17 subjects with Fitzpatrick skin types II–IV. One side of each face was treated by the RODS prototype, the other by a professional practitioner, using an identical Q-switched 1064 nm Nd:YAG protocol — one pass, no overlapping shots.
Laser coverage of treatable area · single pass
- Shots fired per pass
- 268 vs 217 · n.s.
- VISIA at one month
- No significant difference
- Pain score (VAS, max)
- 1 / 10
- Mistargeting of hair or landmarks
- None observed
- Pass duration
- 107.4 s vs 78.6 s
- Ethics approval
- HSEARS20201202001
The robotic pass took longer than the manual one. That is the trade the system makes: slowing the arm is what keeps each shot where the plan put it, and the authors treat the extra seconds as the cost of placement accuracy rather than a defect to engineer away at the expense of precision.
- Muddassir M., Gomez D., Chen S., Hu L., Navarro-Alarcon D. — Robotics Meets Cosmetic Dermatology: Development of a Novel Vision-Guided System for Skin Photo-Rejuvenation. IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, 2022. Read
- Chan S.U., Ip C.C., Lian C., et al. — A Split-face Study of Novel Robotic Prototype vs Human Operator in Skin Rejuvenation Using Q-switched Nd:YAG Laser. Read
- Muddassir M., Chan S.U., Gomez D., Navarro-Alarcon D. — Can a robot outperform a human operator in skin photorejuvenation? Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology, 2021. Read
Platform
One arm, one vision stack, a growing set of handpieces.
The manipulator and the perception system stay the same. What changes is the instrument it carries, which is why each new treatment is a new end-effector and a new plan rather than a new machine on the clinic floor.
SR1
Robotic laser skin rejuvenation. Full-face 3D scan, seven-region planning, thermal feedback and a per-session treatment record.
- Long-pulse 1064 nm Nd:YAG delivery
- Automatic exclusion of eyes, brows, lips, hairline
- Operator selects regions; the arm executes
HR1 PRO
Robotic laser hair removal, extending the same planning stack to body areas where coverage over large fields is the entire problem.
- Large-field trajectory planning
- Contour tracking across body surfaces
Hydra X
Robotic skin revitalisation, pairing the vision system with a hydration and resurfacing workflow for high-turnover clinic settings.
- Shared perception and safety layer
- Built for repeat-visit treatment plans
System architecture
| Manipulator | 6-DOF collaborative arm · 850 mm reach · 5 kg payload · mobile base |
|---|---|
| Depth sensing | Structured-light 3D camera · 0.25–1.5 m range · 67.9° H × 45.3° V |
| Thermal feedback | LWIR sensor · 160 × 120 px · 9 Hz · −10 to 140 °C |
| Laser source | Long-pulse Nd:YAG · 1064 nm · pulse width and fluence set per protocol |
| Planning | Point-cloud reconstruction → 7-region segmentation → non-overlapping shot fill |
| Safety | Constant standoff control · landmark exclusion · per-shot logging |
The manipulator, depth sensing and thermal feedback architecture is the one validated in the published split-face trial; that trial used a Q-switched 1064 nm source, while the current platform delivers long-pulse 1064 nm. Commercial units are specified per market and per clinical protocol.
Company
Built in Hong Kong, with a university lab and a clinic floor on either side.
RODS was founded in 2016 to bring robotics into a field that had been left to the steadiness of the human wrist. The system was developed with the Department of Mechanical Engineering at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and validated with dermatology departments in Guangzhou and Macau. The company is part of the Cyberport community and holds patents on the technology.
- 2016RODS founded in Hong Kong
- 2019First human-subject trials begin with PolyU
- 2021Split-face results published in the clinical literature
- 2022First commercial treatment delivered
- NowExpanding the platform to hair removal and revitalisation
The physician should be the one operating the robot. We did not build this to replace the practitioner — we built it so the hundredth pass of the day is as accurate as the first.
Anthony Lin has spent over twenty years operating aesthetic clinics across Shanghai, Hong Kong and Macau, and founded RODS to close the gap between what those clinics promise and what manual laser delivery can reliably repeat.
Contact
Clinics, distributors and research partners.
Tell us where you are and what you run. We will come back with the configuration, the regulatory position in your market, and what a pilot installation involves.
482 Jaffe Road, Causeway Bay
Hong Kong