We have finally entered the age of the smart hairbrush. Thanks to a collaboration between Kérastase, the professional arm of L'Oreal, and smart technology vendor Withings, you can now have the world's first 'connected hairbrush' and it packs a surprising number of features for a household object that really only has one job.
Costing around $200 and shipping in mid-2017, the hairbrush is packed with sensors that include a gyroscope and accelerometer which help to track your hand movements along three axes. Monitoring the number of strokes during brushing, as well as the ferocity, the device also provides haptic feedback to warn you that you might be abusing your hair by being too rough or brushing too quickly.
There is also a built-in microphone on the device, as well as sensors to assess whether the hair is wet or dry. The microphone is designed to gather information about your hair from the way it sounds during brushing, but it seems feasible that this could one day be used for rating your bathroom-karaoke performance if L'Oreal/Withings suddenly decided to make the device more fun to use.
The information gathered from these various sensors is sent via bluetooth or wifi to an accompanying smartphone app, which not only gives you a 'score' for your hair, but also collects environmental data such as temperature, humidity, UV levels and of course wind, gathered from local weather forecasts to ensure it can plan for the effects of the weather on your hair and advise appropriately.
Of course, the smartphone app is accompanied by ads for other L'Oreal haircare products, which will also likely form part of the 'solution' to your 55% hair health problem.
The newly launched 'smart hairbrush' scooped an innovation award at CES 2017.
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Source: Gizmodo
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