FUE Robotics

You recently responded to a question on the balding blog that FUE will soon incorperate robotics. I’m trying to picture how this would work…. Will patients be required to wear a certain helmet of some sort so that their head remains completely still? Do you think that general anesthesia and paralysis would be necessary?

As you do not want to have a mobile robot like R2-D2 chasing the patient around a room, there must clearly have some head immobilization apparatus to hold the head steady. A smart robot will be programmed with enough pattern recognition to be able to adjust to slight movements. Heavy sedation (not general anesthesia) for the long, arduous process will also be needed. There will not be a helmet because, again, the robot needs to be smartly programmed. I have seen this robot in action. It looked like a scaled down version of the robots used in industry today (e.g. car assembly).