Would You Let A Robot Braid Your Hair? The Time Is Coming
If you’ve ever gotten your hair braided, you know the process can take hours. However, two Harvard graduates have invented a robot that will save you and the braider that time.
Yinka Ogunbiyi and David Afolabi are behind Halo Braid, which enables a braider to initiate a braiding session and allows the machine to do the rest. They won the 2025 President’s Innovation Challenge Award at the Harvard Innovation Lab, which helps small businesses level up. The award came with $75,000, which will help open a salon in Boston and ultimately put the Halo Braid into mass production.
“I know this firsthand because I’ve worn braids all my life, and when I braided my own hair for the first time, it took me four days,” Ogunbiyi said at the startup competition. “But I’m not alone, because hair braiding is now the most popular hairstyle for 20 million Americans who experience this miserable process every eight weeks. And yet, braiding hasn’t seen innovation since braiding was invented 5,000 years ago.”
The machine, which looks somewhat like a salon steamer or standing dryer, will braid at up to five times the speed of a human braider. Ogunbiyi says this also allows hairstylists to save the wear and tear on their hands. While no one has yet seen a prototype, 450 are already in production, and Ogunbiyi says she has used it on her own hair.
She wants Halo Braid to make the hair braiding process “joyful, not painful.” You can find a waiting list and an image of the prototype here.
