Haircuts In Space: How To Keep Your Astronauts Looking Fresh

NASA astronaut Catherine Coleman gives ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli a haircut in the Kibo laboratory on the ISS in 2011. (Credit: NASA)
NASA astronaut Catherine Coleman gives ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli a haircut in the Kibo laboratory on the ISS in 2011. (Credit: NASA)

Although we tend to see mostly the glorious and fun parts of hanging out in a space station, the human body will not cease to do its usual things, whether it involves the digestive system, or even something as mundane as the hair that sprouts from our heads. After all, we do not want our astronauts to return to Earth after a half-year stay in the ISS looking as if they got marooned on an uninhabited island. Introducing the onboard barbershop on the ISS, and the engineering behind making sure that after a decade the ISS doesn’t positively look like it got the 1970s shaggy wall carpet treatment.

The basic solution is rather straightforward: an electric hair clipper attached to a vacuum that will whisk the clippings safely into a container rather than being allowed to drift around. In a way this is similar to the vacuums you find on routers and saws in a woodworking shop, just with more keratin rather than cellulose and lignin.

On the Chinese Tiangong space station they use a similar approach, with the video showing how simple the system is, little more than a small handheld vacuum cleaner attached to the clippers. Naturally, you cannot just tape the vacuum cleaner to some clippers and expect it to get most of the clippings, which is where both the ISS and Tiangong solutions seems to have a carefully designed construction to maximize the hair removal. You can see the ISS system in action in this 2019 video from the Canadian Space Agency.

Of course, this system is not perfect, but amidst the kilograms of shed skin particles from the crew, a few small hair clippings can likely be handled by the ISS’ air treatment systems just fine. The goal after all is to not have a massive expanding cloud of hair clippings filling up the space station.

A Robotic Stylist For Your Lockdown Lengthened Locks

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.

Continue reading “A Robotic Stylist For Your Lockdown Lengthened Locks”

You May Trust Driverless Cars, But Do You Trust Driverless Barbers?

Although it is getting more common to have self-driving cars on the road, we have to admit we are still a bit uneasy. After all, we know first hand how hard it is to think of every case and how unreliable things can be. But what about having your hair cut by a robot? At least a car can have airbags and automatically stop at any sign of trouble. But letting a robot hold a sharp instrument up to your head? That’s what Buzz Robotics wants to do and they are starting with a neck trim that you can see in the video below.

Honestly, since the trimmers are probably not that dangerous, we feel a little better. But the fact that the screen says “Calibrated Bad” doesn’t install confidence. While the robobarber might not be able to cut your head off, it could certainly ruin your coiffure.

Continue reading “You May Trust Driverless Cars, But Do You Trust Driverless Barbers?”