Re:Show HN: I'm building a robot that cuts hair, starting wi...
by GordonS on Friday August 09, 2019 @06:11PM
(#20658613)
Do you have any concerns around safety? What kind of safeguards will you put in place? For example, you might ask the user to keep still, but what happens if they suddenly turn/move their head just as the clippers are going in? Personally, I'd be as still as a statue with robotic clippers coming towards my face, but I'm sure people would get used to it eventually and react to loud noises outside, their phone ringing etc.
> we may even go easier and start with neck fuzz
Surely nobody is going to pay just to get neck fuzz alone shaved off?
* Robotic arms are getting better. They're becoming easy to interface with (I programmed the arm in the video using JavaScript) and they're getting cheaper (the arm in the video is $5k kit, $10k assembled).
* CV technology has advanced significantly in the past couple years thanks to self-driving tech and facial recognition tech. These are advances that can be repurposed to this venture.
* It's going to be baby steps. We mentioned starting with beards but we may even go easier and start with neck fuzz. It's going to be an iterative process and there might be some constraints involved on the UX side until we get better (e.g. asking the user to keep their face within a certain boundary).