It’s perhaps easy to think that despite the rapid acceleration of technology that there are certain jobs that will never be automated out of existence. Generally the job said to be robot-proof is the one held by the person making the proclamation, we notice. But certainly the job of cutting and styling people’s hair could never be done by a robot, right?
We wouldn’t bet the farm on it, although judging by [Shane Wighton]’s quarantine haircut robot, it’ll be a while before the stylists of the world will be on the dole. Said to have sprung from the need to trim his boyishly long hair, the contraption is an object lesson recreating the subtle manual skills a stylist brings to every head they work on — there’s a reason it takes 1,500 hours or more of training to get a license, after all. [Shane] discovered this early, and realized that exactly replicating the manual dexterity of human hands was a non-starter. His cutting head uses a vacuum to stand the hair upright, 3D-printed fingers to grip a small bundle of hair, and servo-driven scissors to cut it to length. The angle of attack of the scissors can be adjusted through multiple axes, and the entire thing rotates on a hell-no-I’m-not-putting-my-head-in-that-thing mechanism.
To his great credit, [Shane] braved the machine as customer zero, after only a few non-conclusive life-safety tests with a dummy head and wig. We won’t spoil the ending, but suffice it to say that the thing actually worked with no bloodshed and only minimal damage to [Shane]’s style. The long-suffering [Mrs. Wighton], however, was not convinced to take a test drive.
In all seriousness, kudos to [Shane] for attacking such a complex problem. We love what he’s doing with his builds, like his basketball catcher and his robo-golf club, and we’re looking forward to more.
Thanks to [Ilkka Takayama] for the tip.
Whatever happened to the FloBee? Attach it to your shopvac and it pulled and cut your hair in one step. Possibly with a minimal amount of hair pulled out, resulting in a perfect 3-stooges haircut. No robots necessary. Just vacuum your head and you’re done.
Probably because the end result was everybody looking like Mr. Bean!
Say what you will, but the FlowBee is great for grooming dogs. They are kinda hard to get a hold of now, because of that.
Brave man.
That’s nothing, wait till you see his RoboMohel!
It doesn’t get paid, but still collects tips 😁
There is no way in hell I would get in that thing.
Makes me think of Wayne’s world, Suckkut, it really does suck. https://youtu.be/AioVDsXidh0
This was the comment I was looking for! “ITs sucks and it cuts”. Wooohhhhh!!!!!
This was a surprisingly well-thought out project! Excellent work. I’d be terrified to let the machine get any closer to my ears, but he seems like he knows what he’s doing.
Careful Macgyver may come knocking on your door for his signature look
if it were anyone else … but this dude knows a thing or two
Sorry, friend. I’m afraid you’ve had too much to think.
Can’t be upsetting the status quo, after all!
awesome :)
With optional firmware upgrade it can also double as suicide booth.
Sweden has had a higher death per capita and higher infection rate per capita, than the culturally and medically equivalent countries, by a large margin.
Japan has a culture where wearing a mask if you are feeling ill is natural, which may have reduced transmission rate, in addition to having an oddly low death rate per infected.
There are also people who prefer not having strangers groap their hair, and would rather have a machine do it.
Oops the one this was meant to reply to got ghosted, might as well ghost the reply.
Reminds me of Michael Reeves’ surgery bot, only less violent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_BlNA7bBxo
You do great and creative stuff. What do you do for a living to afford all that stuff?