I'm a guy and getting a haircut is a pain. It takes too much time (appointment + waiting time + sitting time). It involves traveling to the one barber that knows our style. And it is expensive (~$65, on average, in SF).
We envision a future where you sit down in a kiosk, swipe your card, and a robot performs a fast, clean, consistent, and most importantly, _SAFE_ haircut on you. All for half the usual cost. And your cut is saved in the cloud for use at any Buzz Robotics kiosk in the world.
For the engineers in the crowd, that's a 6 degree of freedom robotic arm with a Wahl trimmer fitted at the end. The arm is provided by Haddington Dynamics (http://hdrobotic.com/). SDK is plain old JavaScript. The point cloud is supplied by a Pico Flexx camera using their C++ SDK.
We totally agree, zepto. Though we're still perfecting the computer vision and path tracing pieces, that is squarely next on the agenda. We realize there's a lot of trust users are giving us and we intend to honor that.
A good buzzer is like 35 bucks in a kit, and then you get hundreds of 'free' buzzes, literally anytime you want. Plus no fear of a robot slitting your throat.
I did this a few weeks ago. I just quit a long tobacco habit, so I might have been a bit impulsive. For the most part, it turned out fine. I needed a second person to help trim the back, though. If you like a clean neckline, that's hard to do yourself.
Anyway, I rather have a 1990's Flowbee (https://www.flowbee.com/) than a robot. I've played Fallout 3 and know what can happen.
Do haircuts really cost $65 in San Fransisco? That seems like a number somebody would make up to parody the high cost of living. ("$65 haircuts! $10 for a loaf of bread! $25 to see a movie!")
In the UK I pay £5 for a scissor cut. Best barber I've ever been to, and he will chat but doesn't need to. It is not a fancy place, there are piles of vintage magazines, a daily local paper and the chair is well worn in (looks like he had two chairs in the past, I guess one broke because he just took it out and moved to the other one). I was recommended the place by a friend who took her kids there 25+ years ago. There is usually a queue on saturday mornings but I've never been there more than half an hour.
I'm not sure I would go to a robot arm.
I bet there are places in California that are similar. Who cuts the hair of the guys who clean the streets and empty the bins? I don't suppose they can afford $65 for a haircut..
> Who cuts the hair of the guys who clean the streets and empty the bins? I don't suppose they can afford $65 for a haircut..
With the California housing crisis, this is solved by the fact that those folks don't live in SF. Many of them commute over an hour each way for those jobs. It's sort of a problem for us...
Here in India, I have the option of going to a cheap barber who costs about $1.2 (yes), a slightly better place that costs about $3, and a top of the line place that costs $8.
Also from the UK. There is a huge difference in prices between a barber shop (generally for men and boys) and a salon (generally for women and girls).
There is also a huge difference in price expectations between men and women (IME, of course there are differences for any gender) - most men I know expect to pay £5-£15 for a haircut, whereas most women I know expect to pay between £30-75 for a haircut.
At a salon you can get a restyle, shampoo, blow dry and all that stuff, which obviously adds to the time and cost, but even for a very basic trim you're looking at at least twice the cost at a salon vs a barber.
Personally, I cut my own hair with a set of Wahl clippers I've had for something like 20 (!) years. This obviously means I'm restricted to a buzz cut, but I think it suits me and has doubtless saved me a lot of money over the years :)
- $25 Movie? $11-12 for a base ticket and easily $15 for a pop and popcorn. Add a beer to that? +$8 And that's taking it light while still buying your concessions there.
No, I pay $12. The stylists don't speak a lot of English and they only do about five styles, but I happen to like one of the styles they do, so it's all good.
But I guess if you actually care about how your hair looks, it could cost more. :)
I pay roughly that in upstate NY. Sure, you can pay $8 for a basic haircut at Supercuts that takes them five minutes to cut around the outline of your head. But for anything more advanced you're going to someone skilled and that costs money.
Re hair cuts: The range is from about $15 all the way to $125, depending on what you are getting done and where. Someone who runs their own small salon, and takes 45 minutes between shampooing, conditioning, talking to you about where to put texture in, and has expensive looking decor is going to cost a lot more than someone who rents a chair at a Great Cuts location.
Higher cost of living, and until you figure out a way to cut my hair in the USA while you're in Colombia or Chile I will have to pay $20 a cut minimum, here in a low cost of living part of the USA.
I'm only half joking when I suggest you might consider re-shooting and/or re-editing the video to elide the human hand strangling (er, "steadying") the dummy. It doesn't elicit confidence or a positive connotation.
That aside, as an introvert, but even as a beardless one, I have nothing but admiration for such efforts to remove human interaction! (Still only half joking.)
This is a very cool project and a bad business idea. I cut my own hair with a Wahl trimmer. Have you gotten liability insurance quotes for this yet?
I am not trying to be a buzzkill but you are going to knick ears, pull out small chunks of hair, and other minor trauma on customers if you try this. You want to have that liability insured and if not you might put yourself in personal financial or legal jeopardy, regardless of legal waivers (IANAL).
We envision a future where you sit down in a kiosk, swipe your card, and a robot performs a fast, clean, consistent, and most importantly, _SAFE_ haircut on you.
How long are you expecting the research phase to take?
I mean, honestly, trying avoid either snark or boosterism, this seems like a challenge akin to getting to level 5 self-driving cars but with a payoff a good deal less. I am both honestly interested in efforts to do things like this but also very much in awe at the hurdles such problems present.
We don't have humanoid robots that easily occupy the same space with a human, in the fashion that humans interact with each other daily without one human swinging their elbow into the face of another. Solving that problem is a big deal (it holds back things like medical transport robots). Shaving a person seems a more intense version of this problem - the problem isn't the raw dexterity of the robot but it's ability adjust to and even anticipate a person's micro bodily adjustments (oh, also adjust to the unique physical properties of a given person hair, properties that can even by the part of the body - I have curly patches in places, etc).
Despite my general pessimism here, I'd be interested in what tool you imagine could get there.
Edit: And one could solve this problem also with something akin to auto-adjusting helmet, so you essentially extend the logic of the plastic guards that keep clippers a fixed distance from the head - the problem here is you'd wind-up building an extremely complex machine without much guarantee of giving a good haircut (the simple motions of a barber conceal an awareness of what their object is and it isn't hair all the same length - an average person use guarder clippers to get that and literally not pretty).
We're still figuring it out is the honest answer. Here are some learnings from this past year that address some of your points:
* 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).
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?
i'll sound like a luddite here, but i hope this never really gets to the point of replacing barbers and especially barber shops.
barber shops are pretty unique places in that people are really chatty, and it doesn't really matter if you're e.g. a banker or fast food worker, you're still a part of the little community. it's cool to connect with people from all statuses and people tend to be really open, loose, good energy, plus you see the same characters all the time, so it's a mini community.
yeah, it's pretty expensive but i personally enjoy that routine/non automated part of my life.
We have a small barber shop here. They have beer on tap, a few dogs running around that are friendly and help distract kids.
Amazing service, always friendly fast cuts/shaves. Another nice aspect is you could be sitting in there with a lawyer, police officer, doctor, custodian and no one cares about your job/social status. The guys just wanna unwind after a long day of work, drink a few beers and talk about the latest in hunting/fishing/camping.
I’ve thought the same with dentists. I’ve thought about it in the past, maybe a preferences file that spans different categories/topics that you can share sections of with people or companies when applicable. Marketers and privacy issues kind of ruin that idea though.
Totally agree, maximente. If you go in to get a cut for the experience, you're not our target customer (which is totally OK). SportsClips has centered this business around creating a fun experience (drink a beer, watch the game, get a cut).
Our prime demographic are working professional men who care about convenience, speed, and cost. Think standard management consultant who's pressed for time, needs to look good for client meetings, and would pay for a quick touch up.
If you care about convenience, speed, and cost, and have a hairstyle that is clipper friendly, buy a clipper (~$75) and a set of clipper combs (~$10) and cut your own hair at home in 5 minutes or so anytime you want. I clip #3 sides and back and #6 on top. Anything the clipper can reach is intended to be cut.
I have often given myself a quick touch up before a presentation, business trip, or important meeting, so that part is a genuine value prop, but this solution seems a bit like building a robotic sledgehammer in order to swat flies.
Most people do not have the skill to do anything beyond a buzz cut and don't want to risk messing things up to practice. Plus, if I want to try something new, it doesn't matter how well I can maintain my current style.
Holy crap, where are you getting your clipper? You can get a perfectly nice Wahl clipping kit for $20, which comes with the clipper and the color-coded comb attachments, and scissors and some instructions, and a convenient carrying case. Amazingly, it's even made in the USA if you care about that.
At the other extreme, an Oster 76 is $150 and that doesn't even include a full set of combs, but it'll last several lifetimes - they'll go 20+ years in daily barbershop service even. And the 76 will cut even thick, hard to cut hair without bogging down; think "fades in natural African-American hair" which will absolutely bog down cheap clippers.
That said, if you have Caucasian hair and just want to do an acceptable trim-up on your top-of-head haircut, the $20 kit will last years and do just fine. You'll feel the difference if shaving anything else though.. even with easy to cut hair, the immense power and smoothness of a true professional clipper is amazing.
In the universe of The Stars My Destination, in which all humans have the power to instantaneously teleport ("jaunte"), land vehicles become a symbol of money, power, and status.
The same will become true of human barbers in a world where home robots provide perfect haircuts for the cost of energy and upkeep: those with disposable income seeking a personalized, artisanal, handcrafted experience will frequent a barbershop while most of the hoi polloi will take advantage of the robots.
I'm sure it'll never replace barber shops for people like you who really want some dude putting his hands on your head.
Personally, I cut my own hair, and would welcome a robot that can do it cheaply and more consistently than I can myself, and wouldn't require me to waste time going to a shop and then dealing with the human part that I really don't care for.
Exactly! Barbershops are a unique place and great to spend an hour or an hour and half once a month chatting with everyone. Plus a proper haircut with a straight razor around the edges and neck, followed up by a cool/warm towel to clean everything off, and after-shave applied.
Its $33 for that with a solid beard trim; mine is at 3-4" and he keeps it looking nice.
First and foremost, you get a standing ovation from me for doing the sort of mad science that'll always be worth doing and gets me excited about the world.
One concern I have is, that razor really seems to push that dummy's head back quite a bit, and I'd imagine it'd be rather uncomfortable to have that wacking you. Is there any way to avoid that? Is it maybe not as painful as it looks?
Feels like the kind of thing that would slit your throat if you had a poorly place tattoo. But I’m betting it can be made to work well though. I would feel sad however. Most great barbers are small business owners. Barbers are perhaps the one service for which I enjoy tipping culture. I don’t talk much during cuts but I enjoy the process quite a bit.
Interesting project! I've thought about this one before, mostly due to Jimmy Neutron.
What arm are you using? Also what depth sensor?
A few suggestions:
It would appear that you're taking a pretty common approach to robot manipulation, sense, plan, "close your eyes" and then act. This works for stationary objects when you have high accuracy control and high accuracy sensing. Unless you're envisioning strapping people's heads down, your target is going to move. This will necessitate a closed-loop approach.
A closed-loop approach here would benefit from force control at the end effector. ATI[1] is a good source for 6-axis load cells and they've recently come out with smaller form factor load cells.
A second useful sensor would be a Time-of-Flight depth sensor. The old PMD Camboard Nano used to get up to 90 FPS and a close effective range (if I recall correctly ~3-4"). The time of flight sensors can be a bit noisy, but I've written up some of the smoothing approaches I've taken [2].
Dexter by Haddington Dynamics for the arm. Pico Flexx for the depth sensor.
Deeply appreciative of your feedback. Long term, we want to install a force control sensor. The arm actually has a mode that detects negative torque so we may tap into that.
Might reach out to you separately for some follow ups - thanks again for the guidance here.
I've actually built a Dexter with the guys from HD. One of the beauties of that arm is its ability to force sensing inherently, at least the version I have. I doubt you'd need additional force sensing capabilities on top of what you get from Dexter.
However, I suspect you're near the arm's payload limit with the clipper setup. Feel free to reach out. I get to the Bay Area every semester or so.
Fortunately, getting a haircut is not so expensive everywhere. To be honest with you what you try to accomplish is a repeated topic of discussion in my barber shop and for the moment they seem happy not to see this kind of tech working.
Where I live people go the barber shop to feel somebody is taking care of them and have a nice chat in addition to having a nice haircut.
I think it's a business that tries to overcome the loneliness but I think you can compete with this if Buzz Robotics brings a kind of human touch, maybe you could make people appreciate robots after all.
>what you try to accomplish is a repeated topic of discussion in my barber shop and for the moment they seem happy not to see this kind of tech working.
Of course, just like truck drivers don't want to see self-driving trucks. That doesn't mean it's a bad idea at all, just that people don't want their job automated away. As someone who hates barbershops, I'll take a robotic barber any day.
>Where I live people go the barber shop to feel somebody is taking care of them and have a nice chat in addition to having a nice haircut.
If that's what they want, then they can keep going to the barbershop for that experience, and keep it in business. No one's going to force them to use the robot.
>but I think you can compete with this if Buzz Robotics brings a kind of human touch
The whole point of something like this is to eliminate the human touch! It's to make getting a haircut a quick, inexpensive, and automated experience, just like buying a drink from a vending machine instead of going to a shop and having it hand-made for you while you sit and chat with someone. It's entirely possible to make coffee with an automatic machine, but Starbucks doesn't seem to be hurting.
A sales representative is advertising his company's invention, a shaving machine. "You put your head in a box", he says, "and two razor sharp knives swoosh down and cut your beard."
"Don't people have different head shapes?", an audience member interjects.
Curious how many men care about the relationship with their barber enough for this to not take off if done well.
There’s likely a sizable population that cares more about convenience, cost, and predictability of outcome.
Premium barbershops currently compete on experiences vs outcomes: giving you a glass of whiskey, providing great ambiance, etc. If robots become the default for basic haircuts it will make premium barbershops seems all the more luxurious because you have an actual person (an artist!) cutting your hair. Perhaps they'll be able to raise their prices even more.
1st Disclosure: I'm one of the co-founders of On Deck and the OP is in the On Deck Fellowship.
2nd Disclosure: I thought this idea was completely crazy when Manish first brought in that absurd mannequin with the replaceable beards. Now, the more I think about what he's building and the opportunity space the more I love it.
I think anyone who pays a lot for barber or hair stylist is paying for both the experience and the knowledge that they'll wind-up looking like all the other people who pay a lot and that others will know this.
I suspect that styles shift subtly over time and a person's stylist give advice about what might look best on a person. And you might even want to seen by or see other customers of given a stylist.
Which is to say, I'd say absolutely, relationship with stylist matters but that relationship isn't just an irrational attachment to chatting with the person - it can extend to the finished product, how one winds-up looking.
I am introverted enough that I despise going to a barber to get my beard trimmed (and it shows), and would gladly let a robot do it, if it did a good job. There is certainly a market for this.
That being said, when the first thing in the video was the robot jamming the clippers hard into the mannequin's jaw, I realized that while the idea is interesting, it not is not quite ready for prime time.
I agree. I upvoted this submission because, IMO, it's comically bad. It will be a long before a contraption like this is ready for prime time.
The video is only a minute long, worth watching for the yucks.
It's cringe-worthy the way the the razor whacks into the dummy's head. The concern is brushed off with "the force sensing isn't there yet". Yeah, just a small matter of hardware and programming. And, as someone else pointed out, there's the small matter of the hand around the dummy's neck.
I'd love this to get to a stage of getting me consistent haircut. I like barbers but i have horrible time getting consistent haircuts. If I can rely on this robot, I'd switch instantly.
93 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] threadI'm a guy and getting a haircut is a pain. It takes too much time (appointment + waiting time + sitting time). It involves traveling to the one barber that knows our style. And it is expensive (~$65, on average, in SF).
We envision a future where you sit down in a kiosk, swipe your card, and a robot performs a fast, clean, consistent, and most importantly, _SAFE_ haircut on you. All for half the usual cost. And your cut is saved in the cloud for use at any Buzz Robotics kiosk in the world.
For the engineers in the crowd, that's a 6 degree of freedom robotic arm with a Wahl trimmer fitted at the end. The arm is provided by Haddington Dynamics (http://hdrobotic.com/). SDK is plain old JavaScript. The point cloud is supplied by a Pico Flexx camera using their C++ SDK.
If the business case interests you, here's a pitch I gave at last week's OnDeck fellowship demo day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td7L3qREzqA&feature=youtu.be
Lastly, if this sounds interesting to you, reach out (arithmetic@gmail.com). Happy to grab coffee too if you're in the bay area.
This is essentially an unsupervised internet accessible surgical robot.
A good buzzer is like 35 bucks in a kit, and then you get hundreds of 'free' buzzes, literally anytime you want. Plus no fear of a robot slitting your throat.
- Actually getting the line perfect is not trivial, even if you're experienced
- This brings us one step closer to The Jetsons, and I'm in favor
Anyway, I rather have a 1990's Flowbee (https://www.flowbee.com/) than a robot. I've played Fallout 3 and know what can happen.
I'm not sure I would go to a robot arm.
I bet there are places in California that are similar. Who cuts the hair of the guys who clean the streets and empty the bins? I don't suppose they can afford $65 for a haircut..
With the California housing crisis, this is solved by the fact that those folks don't live in SF. Many of them commute over an hour each way for those jobs. It's sort of a problem for us...
There is also a huge difference in price expectations between men and women (IME, of course there are differences for any gender) - most men I know expect to pay £5-£15 for a haircut, whereas most women I know expect to pay between £30-75 for a haircut.
At a salon you can get a restyle, shampoo, blow dry and all that stuff, which obviously adds to the time and cost, but even for a very basic trim you're looking at at least twice the cost at a salon vs a barber.
Personally, I cut my own hair with a set of Wahl clippers I've had for something like 20 (!) years. This obviously means I'm restricted to a buzz cut, but I think it suits me and has doubtless saved me a lot of money over the years :)
- $65 Haircut? Pretty easy, even for a simple men's cut. (I've paid as low as $8 with...varying results)
- $10 loaf of bread? Look no further than https://brodflour.com/#menu
- $25 Movie? $11-12 for a base ticket and easily $15 for a pop and popcorn. Add a beer to that? +$8 And that's taking it light while still buying your concessions there.
But I guess if you actually care about how your hair looks, it could cost more. :)
This way they could make the haircut free by having the bot slip product endorsements into the conversation.
TBH that just seems like a ripoff.
Now a haircut costs $165 and it's an automatic subscription. Colombian barber still gets $3 though.
This is helping!
That aside, as an introvert, but even as a beardless one, I have nothing but admiration for such efforts to remove human interaction! (Still only half joking.)
I am not trying to be a buzzkill but you are going to knick ears, pull out small chunks of hair, and other minor trauma on customers if you try this. You want to have that liability insured and if not you might put yourself in personal financial or legal jeopardy, regardless of legal waivers (IANAL).
How long are you expecting the research phase to take?
I mean, honestly, trying avoid either snark or boosterism, this seems like a challenge akin to getting to level 5 self-driving cars but with a payoff a good deal less. I am both honestly interested in efforts to do things like this but also very much in awe at the hurdles such problems present.
We don't have humanoid robots that easily occupy the same space with a human, in the fashion that humans interact with each other daily without one human swinging their elbow into the face of another. Solving that problem is a big deal (it holds back things like medical transport robots). Shaving a person seems a more intense version of this problem - the problem isn't the raw dexterity of the robot but it's ability adjust to and even anticipate a person's micro bodily adjustments (oh, also adjust to the unique physical properties of a given person hair, properties that can even by the part of the body - I have curly patches in places, etc).
Despite my general pessimism here, I'd be interested in what tool you imagine could get there.
Edit: And one could solve this problem also with something akin to auto-adjusting helmet, so you essentially extend the logic of the plastic guards that keep clippers a fixed distance from the head - the problem here is you'd wind-up building an extremely complex machine without much guarantee of giving a good haircut (the simple motions of a barber conceal an awareness of what their object is and it isn't hair all the same length - an average person use guarder clippers to get that and literally not pretty).
* 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).
> we may even go easier and start with neck fuzz
Surely nobody is going to pay just to get neck fuzz alone shaved off?
barber shops are pretty unique places in that people are really chatty, and it doesn't really matter if you're e.g. a banker or fast food worker, you're still a part of the little community. it's cool to connect with people from all statuses and people tend to be really open, loose, good energy, plus you see the same characters all the time, so it's a mini community.
yeah, it's pretty expensive but i personally enjoy that routine/non automated part of my life.
I pop into a supercuts and I'm out in less than 15 minutes. Minimal chatting.
Not like supercuts, Floyd's, etc. Those aren't actual barbers - they are cosmetologists [1].
More info on the barbershop experience / history here: https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/rediscovering-the-ba...
1 - https://www.barbercosmo.ca.gov/
Amazing service, always friendly fast cuts/shaves. Another nice aspect is you could be sitting in there with a lawyer, police officer, doctor, custodian and no one cares about your job/social status. The guys just wanna unwind after a long day of work, drink a few beers and talk about the latest in hunting/fishing/camping.
Just ask, "Do you mind if I just chill here with my eyes closed while you cut?" If they get offended, find another barber.
Our prime demographic are working professional men who care about convenience, speed, and cost. Think standard management consultant who's pressed for time, needs to look good for client meetings, and would pay for a quick touch up.
I have often given myself a quick touch up before a presentation, business trip, or important meeting, so that part is a genuine value prop, but this solution seems a bit like building a robotic sledgehammer in order to swat flies.
I have to agree that the Wahl's kit you're talking about (Amazon ASIN B000JNQSIQ) looks like an excellent deal.
That said, if you have Caucasian hair and just want to do an acceptable trim-up on your top-of-head haircut, the $20 kit will last years and do just fine. You'll feel the difference if shaving anything else though.. even with easy to cut hair, the immense power and smoothness of a true professional clipper is amazing.
The same will become true of human barbers in a world where home robots provide perfect haircuts for the cost of energy and upkeep: those with disposable income seeking a personalized, artisanal, handcrafted experience will frequent a barbershop while most of the hoi polloi will take advantage of the robots.
Personally, I cut my own hair, and would welcome a robot that can do it cheaply and more consistently than I can myself, and wouldn't require me to waste time going to a shop and then dealing with the human part that I really don't care for.
Its $33 for that with a solid beard trim; mine is at 3-4" and he keeps it looking nice.
One concern I have is, that razor really seems to push that dummy's head back quite a bit, and I'd imagine it'd be rather uncomfortable to have that wacking you. Is there any way to avoid that? Is it maybe not as painful as it looks?
Sounds like a good reason not to have a tattoo... among many other reasons. Are you trying to look like a criminal?
Besides, from the description it sounds like it has a standard hair clipper on it. Those don't have exposed blades, so it should be pretty safe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQSh1MWIdVU
OP's pitch is also on the youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td7L3qREzqA
What arm are you using? Also what depth sensor?
A few suggestions:
It would appear that you're taking a pretty common approach to robot manipulation, sense, plan, "close your eyes" and then act. This works for stationary objects when you have high accuracy control and high accuracy sensing. Unless you're envisioning strapping people's heads down, your target is going to move. This will necessitate a closed-loop approach.
A closed-loop approach here would benefit from force control at the end effector. ATI[1] is a good source for 6-axis load cells and they've recently come out with smaller form factor load cells.
A second useful sensor would be a Time-of-Flight depth sensor. The old PMD Camboard Nano used to get up to 90 FPS and a close effective range (if I recall correctly ~3-4"). The time of flight sensors can be a bit noisy, but I've written up some of the smoothing approaches I've taken [2].
Good luck!
[1] https://www.ati-ia.com/
[2] http://www.cbames.com/publications
Deeply appreciative of your feedback. Long term, we want to install a force control sensor. The arm actually has a mode that detects negative torque so we may tap into that.
Might reach out to you separately for some follow ups - thanks again for the guidance here.
However, I suspect you're near the arm's payload limit with the clipper setup. Feel free to reach out. I get to the Bay Area every semester or so.
Fortunately, getting a haircut is not so expensive everywhere. To be honest with you what you try to accomplish is a repeated topic of discussion in my barber shop and for the moment they seem happy not to see this kind of tech working.
Where I live people go the barber shop to feel somebody is taking care of them and have a nice chat in addition to having a nice haircut.
I think it's a business that tries to overcome the loneliness but I think you can compete with this if Buzz Robotics brings a kind of human touch, maybe you could make people appreciate robots after all.
Of course, just like truck drivers don't want to see self-driving trucks. That doesn't mean it's a bad idea at all, just that people don't want their job automated away. As someone who hates barbershops, I'll take a robotic barber any day.
>Where I live people go the barber shop to feel somebody is taking care of them and have a nice chat in addition to having a nice haircut.
If that's what they want, then they can keep going to the barbershop for that experience, and keep it in business. No one's going to force them to use the robot.
>but I think you can compete with this if Buzz Robotics brings a kind of human touch
The whole point of something like this is to eliminate the human touch! It's to make getting a haircut a quick, inexpensive, and automated experience, just like buying a drink from a vending machine instead of going to a shop and having it hand-made for you while you sit and chat with someone. It's entirely possible to make coffee with an automatic machine, but Starbucks doesn't seem to be hurting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lgluqEiQow
A sales representative is advertising his company's invention, a shaving machine. "You put your head in a box", he says, "and two razor sharp knives swoosh down and cut your beard."
"Don't people have different head shapes?", an audience member interjects.
"Only for the first time."
There’s likely a sizable population that cares more about convenience, cost, and predictability of outcome.
Premium barbershops currently compete on experiences vs outcomes: giving you a glass of whiskey, providing great ambiance, etc. If robots become the default for basic haircuts it will make premium barbershops seems all the more luxurious because you have an actual person (an artist!) cutting your hair. Perhaps they'll be able to raise their prices even more.
1st Disclosure: I'm one of the co-founders of On Deck and the OP is in the On Deck Fellowship.
2nd Disclosure: I thought this idea was completely crazy when Manish first brought in that absurd mannequin with the replaceable beards. Now, the more I think about what he's building and the opportunity space the more I love it.
I suspect that styles shift subtly over time and a person's stylist give advice about what might look best on a person. And you might even want to seen by or see other customers of given a stylist.
Which is to say, I'd say absolutely, relationship with stylist matters but that relationship isn't just an irrational attachment to chatting with the person - it can extend to the finished product, how one winds-up looking.
That being said, when the first thing in the video was the robot jamming the clippers hard into the mannequin's jaw, I realized that while the idea is interesting, it not is not quite ready for prime time.
The video is only a minute long, worth watching for the yucks.
It's cringe-worthy the way the the razor whacks into the dummy's head. The concern is brushed off with "the force sensing isn't there yet". Yeah, just a small matter of hardware and programming. And, as someone else pointed out, there's the small matter of the hand around the dummy's neck.
Comedy gold.