Hair Follicle Harvesting Robot Approved By FDA

Baldness is one of those things that our capitalist society manages to rail against something fierce. We have foams, drugs, surgeries, and old-wives tales all centered around the dreaded idea of losing your hair. I think hair loss is similar to how silverback gorillas go silver when they're all alpha-male and in-charge. One time I read it had something to do with testosterone. That said, Restoration Robotics just received clearance to market a new robotic system called the ARTAS. It's designed to assist in the hair transplant process by precisely ripping out a hair follicle and storing it until the doc can manually transplant it into the area where the hair is thin.

First off, who thought it would be a good idea to program a robot to literally gouge needles into someone's scalp, ripping out their hair one strand at a time? I know that's not something I would ever think about, ever. This idea is terrifying to me. But, it is an impressive technical feat, so... There's that.

Restoration Robots is based in Mountain View CA. They hope to streamline the hair transplant process, of which there were more than 100,000 in 2009. They claim that the ARTAS robot will shave (pun intended) hours off of the procedure.

[via Forbes]