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. 2014 Nov;32(11):633-41.
doi: 10.1089/pho.2014.3774. Epub 2014 Oct 24.

A study on the development of a robot-assisted automatic laser hair removal system

Hyoung-Woo Lim  1 , Sungwoo Park, Seungwoo Noh, Dong-Hun Lee, Chiyul Yoon, Wooseok Koh, Youdan Kim, Jin Ho Chung, Hee Chan Kim, Sungwan Kim
Affiliations

A study on the development of a robot-assisted automatic laser hair removal system

Hyoung-Woo Lim et al. Photomed Laser Surg. 2014 Nov.

Abstract

Abstract Background and Objective: The robot-assisted automatic laser hair removal (LHR) system is developed to automatically detect any arbitrary shape of the desired LHR treatment area and to provide uniform laser irradiation to the designated skin area.

Methods: For uniform delivery of laser energy, a unit of a commercial LHR device, a laser distance sensor, and a high-resolution webcam are attached at the six axis industrial robot's end-effector, which can be easily controlled using a graphical user interface (GUI). During the treatment, the system provides real-time treatment progress as well as the total number of "pick and place" automatically.

Results: During the test, it was demonstrated that the arbitrary shapes were detected, and that the laser was delivered uniformly. The localization error test and the area-per-spot test produced satisfactory outcome averages of 1.04 mm error and 38.22 mm(2)/spot, respectively.

Conclusions: RESULTS showed that the system successfully demonstrated accuracy and effectiveness. The proposed system is expected to become a promising device in LHR treatment.

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Figures

<b>FIG. 1.</b>
FIG. 1.
Operation order of the proposed system.
<b>FIG. 2.</b>
FIG. 2.
Hybrid control scheme for integrating vision and laser sensor on a robot.
<b>FIG. 3.</b>
FIG. 3.
The proposed system's hardware.
<b>FIG. 4.</b>
FIG. 4.
(a) Robot base coordinate, end effector coordinate, and camera coordinate. (b) Virtual patient in treatment. (c) Laser hair removal (LHR) practice progress shown in terms of completion rate. Black filled area signify completion. The laser output window (LOW) contact starts from the top left and ends at the bottom right. From top to bottom, 0%, 30% (4 min 09 sec elapsed), 60% (8 min 19 sec elapsed), and 100% (14 min 7 sec elapsed) respectively. The robot moved with uniform acceleration and deceleration—both took 4.41 m/sec2. The area of target is 90×90 mm2, and the total number of “pick and place” spots is 210.
<b>FIG. 5.</b>
FIG. 5.
Coordinate mapping example. (a) Coordinates received from the vision sensor. (b) Parameters of each coordinate used for mapping.
<b>FIG. 6.</b>
FIG. 6.
Localization test board on graph paper. Total dimensions in 200×400 mm2, each point neighboring another by 100 mm. Each point was given in PCR where C=(1,2,3) and R=(1,2,3,4,5).
<b>FIG. 7.</b>
FIG. 7.
Various types of arbitrary shaped target detection results. From a to d, area per spot was measured 38.04, 38.63, 38.02, and 38.20 mm2/spot, respectively.
<b>FIG. 8.</b>
FIG. 8.
Graphic user interface (GUI) panel. Filled out black regions show irradiated treatment and yellow hollow circles are to-be-irradiated zones.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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