As an old prediction about robotic hair cutters goes:

— But people have different head shapes, what about that?

— Well, initially they do.

For those fellow readers who do not know the Flowbee, here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK7_VSpTyVY

Quote: "This ingenious device lets you give yourself and family perfect haircuts everytime!"

If anyone else suddenly had a flashback of Wayne's World where the Flowbee was parodied, here's the clip you're looking for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LrJDt-fPQI

This guy actually gives himself a decent haircut with one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4XKVEm11dI

My buddy's nickname in HS was Flowbee. His mom cut his hair. It actually looked good, I think it was the uniform nature of it that earned him the name.

There's a similar device (possibly a Flowbee) used by the robot GERTY in Moon (2009).

https://invidio.us/watch?v=84Ewj-BOBuc

Yeah, my only reaction to “robot wielding sharp instruments within tens of millimeters of my scalp” is “nope, nope, nope!”

I was the complete opposite, maybe I'm a hater.

The hard part isn't done. Controlling servos and motors is school level work. Combining it with 3D, a 400 level class.

But it doesn't actually work. Saying "I can collaborate with a stylist" is not the bottleneck. It's the precision, the irregularities between clients, and obviously more.

Its a cool YouTube video if you don't know design Engineering, but I was utterly disappointed and was surprised to see people praising him..

I don't get all the hate here. Here's a charming guy making a fun video about an impractical robot to cut hair and showing how you can make a fairly complicated thing in a home shop that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

And people are disliking him because he's funny, good-looking, smart, and educational. C'mon. Don't be jealous of him.

Which bit of it was unthinkable? A vacuum, servos, microswitches and control software are 1980s technology.

The depth sensing camera, but he didn't use that; the 3D printing components were a convenience but not necessary as he said himself; the 3D modelling program to define the locations on his head and angles to cut could have been done with older software. Was there anything which couldn't have been done by a sufficiently motivated person with tens of thousands of dollars of workshop (like he has) in 2010, 2000 or 1990?

Yeah that's a hater. It was a youtube project showing some Engineering skills applied to a difficult problem. Not a product to be shipped.

You are inspiring me to make my own YouTube channel now!

It seems expensive. I understood YouTube had reduced payments to content providers. Can it really support that machine shop? Or is the guy independently wealthy?

To a first approximation, no one should go into content creation (whether YouTube, a podcast, a book, a blog...) with the primary intent of making more than some token amount of money that makes driving for Uber seem like a pretty cushy gig.

Doesn't mean you shouldn't do it of course. Direct money (as opposed to supporting other activities) isn't really one of them though.

I'm guessing the majority of his income for these videos comes from Patreon, although with his current 167 subscribers at $5 or $12 per month it's not a living wage.