Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Making Fun: Computer Vision Hair Trimmer”.
Being a man of simple tastes, I prefer to buzz cut my own hair rather than get professional haircuts. This works fine for the parts that I can see, but the back of my neck is hard to trim even with mirrors, rather than continue to take the easy way out and ask my wife secure my neck. I set out to build a complex contraption to assist me. I understand that this isn’t really a serious problem and the resultant rig may be of dubious practicality, but bear with me, while I embark on a quest to learn some new skills and have fun in the process. I found an awesome library called react division. It takes care of all the hard parts recognizing special symbols called fiducial markers. The trimmer will need a marker, as will my head. The react. Division.
A pin a processing sketch on my laptop will take care of the computer vision, but the laptop will need a way to control the trimmer. I replace the trimmers battery compartment with a couple power leads. I soldered up a simple circuit with an Arduino microcontroller, a transistor controlling a relay controlling the double-a power supplied to the new power leads on the trimmer. I mounted it all in a little project box with the USB cable to the computer poking out the bottom.
I modified a construction helmet to hold the pair of fiducial markers, so the computer would know the position and angle of my head. The markers could be positioned anywhere on the head, but putting them right on the cut line makes her less math and easier programming. Once the computer knows where the cut line is and where the trimmer is it’s a simple matter of turning the trimmer on whenever it goes below the cut line now, for the final test cross your fingers, it’s looking good at the start.
For the most part, the trimmer engages correct with it just a little high on the left, either because the helmet was per kid or because my head tilting caused the Timmers fiducial to leave the plane of the helmets meditation and then there’s a matter of my nervous Hands combining with the low frame rate of the old computer for a couple of big misses. The system could use improvement for sure. I’M optimistic, though, that a bunch of bright makers will hop to it and we’ll all be trimming our own hair, soon. .