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That is never gonna work. Seriously. Cutting hair is a highly manual job, requiring precision use of a number of different tools- some pretty dangerous- on an i

by Udik 7y ago

That is never gonna work. Seriously. Cutting hair is a highly manual job, requiring precision use of a number of different tools- some pretty dangerous- on an irregular, soft and constantly moving surface. Covered in, well, long, irregularly shaped hair. The idea of a hair cutting robot is fun, but it's decades or more ahead of what we can do.

perl4ever 7y ago
It seems a lot easier than driving a car, and your description of the task sounds like surgical robots, which are a thing already, with superhuman capabilities.
- Udik 7y ago
  I don't think it is easier than driving a car- somehow it feels even harder. Driving is a very well defined task: you are sitting in a precise position from which you get a well defined and purely visual input, and based on that you operate on three or four analog commands- maybe 3 degrees of freedom in all? And while the visual environment can be complex, there are situations- such as driving on a highway- in which the environment has already been reduced to a schematic version of itself: a wide, mostly straight road, with lanes and sides marked, and all other objects on it conveniently vehicle-shaped. Cutting hair is none of this: your position constantly changes, and the stuff you're operating on is irregularly shaped and constantly moves and tilts and turns. You need to manipulate small tools relying on a mix of visual, touch and force feedback, and you need to interact with hair, which is probably difficult to model. I don't know much of surgical robots, but I assume they're either executing pre-planned operations with a single tool on a completely still subject and/ or they're being controlled by a human surgeon.
  - kleer001 7y ago
    There are no battle field surgical robots running unassisted operations on humans.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    I'm sure I've read in the past about robotic surgery allowing compensation for a patient that is definitely not completely still, whereas traditional methods might, say, require stopping the heart. Are they still "controlled" by a human? Maybe, but there are different levels of control.

by Udik 7y ago

perl4ever 7y ago

It seems a lot easier than driving a car, and your description of the task sounds like surgical robots, which are a thing already, with superhuman capabilities.

Udik 7y ago
I don't think it is easier than driving a car- somehow it feels even harder. Driving is a very well defined task: you are sitting in a precise position from which you get a well defined and purely visual input, and based on that you operate on three or four analog commands- maybe 3 degrees of freedom in all? And while the visual environment can be complex, there are situations- such as driving on a highway- in which the environment has already been reduced to a schematic version of itself: a wide, mostly straight road, with lanes and sides marked, and all other objects on it conveniently vehicle-shaped. Cutting hair is none of this: your position constantly changes, and the stuff you're operating on is irregularly shaped and constantly moves and tilts and turns. You need to manipulate small tools relying on a mix of visual, touch and force feedback, and you need to interact with hair, which is probably difficult to model. I don't know much of surgical robots, but I assume they're either executing pre-planned operations with a single tool on a completely still subject and/ or they're being controlled by a human surgeon.
- kleer001 7y ago
  There are no battle field surgical robots running unassisted operations on humans.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  I'm sure I've read in the past about robotic surgery allowing compensation for a patient that is definitely not completely still, whereas traditional methods might, say, require stopping the heart. Are they still "controlled" by a human? Maybe, but there are different levels of control.