Would You Let A Robot Braid Your Hair?

A hair-braiding robot sounds like something straight out of The Jetsons. But it’s real, and it’s happening now.

Halo Braid, the first patent-pending braiding robot, is shaking up the beauty world and social media timelines. The innovation just won Harvard’s 2025 President’s Innovation Challenge in May and is now going viral for its futuristic take on protective styling.

Created by Harvard Business School grads Yinka Ogunbiyi and David Afolabi, Halo is designed to help cut braiding time in half. The idea is simple: the braider starts the braid, and Halo finishes it, getting a six-hour ‘do done in minutes. Using machine learning, the robot is trained on thousands of styles to match professional quality and speed the process up to five times faster than the average human braider.

“However, designing a device that works has been really tough,” said Ogunbiyi in a recent interview. In May, she revealed her team had spent 18 months building 450 prototypes. “The tricky thing is creating a braid, doing it on a human’s head, and doing it with hair, which is one of the hardest things to work with.”

And before you picture a humanoid robot standing behind a salon chair, don’t. Halo is a sleek, mechanical device built to handle the braiding process with precision, not personality.

Still, not everyone’s sure how to feel about it. Some braiders are wondering if robots could eventually replace them, while others see it as a tool that could make their jobs easier. And then there’s the cultural side. Braiding is more than just a style, it’s a tradition. So, is this innovation a threat or a breakthrough?

Either way, one thing’s clear: the future of beauty is getting a lot more high-tech.

Press play below to watch Ogunbiyi share the inspiration behind this innovative tool and learn more at halobraid.com.