Hair Washing Robot: Salon Basins to ABB Cobots

A hair washing robot has a small but awkward job: wet a head, lather it, rub the scalp with steady pressure, rinse it and keep water out of the eyes, often for someone who cannot lean over a sink. Salons do this by hand dozens of times a day, and care homes do it for residents who cannot do it themselves. This post follows hair washing from Brighton's shampooing baths and the barber's basin to Panasonic's 24-finger robot, looks at what salons and AI labs are doing in 2026, and sets out where force-sensing ABB cobots such as GoFa could fit. That last part is still only a possibility.

Backwash sinks for washing hair inside a hair salon. Photo: johnrosman / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

How shampooing went from Brighton baths to the salon basin

English borrowed the word shampoo from India, where it first meant massage. In 1814 Sake Dean Mahomed and his Irish wife Jane Daly were running a shampooing bathhouse in Britain, and in 1821 he opened his Indian Medicated Vapour Baths on the seafront in Brighton, where a blue plaque now marks the site. The plaque calls him shampooing surgeon to George IV and William IV. Shampooing there meant a full body massage in steam. The sense of washing the hair is first recorded in 1860, and for decades after that it meant soap, a jug of warm water and somebody's hands.

Blue plaque in Brighton marking the site of Sake Dean Mahomed's Indian Medicated Vapour Baths, opened in 1821. Photo: 833P / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The products changed faster than the work. In 1900 the German perfumer and hairdresser Josef Wilhelm Rausch sold a liquid hair soap, and in 1927 Hans Schwarzkopf in Berlin improved liquid shampoo so it could be mass produced. Drene, launched in the 1930s, was the first shampoo made with synthetic surfactants instead of soap. None of this changed who did the washing. In a barber shop like the one photographed in Singapore in 1940, or a ladies' salon in Europe, the client sat or leaned while a barber or an apprentice worked the lather in with their fingers.

A barber shop in Singapore, photographed in 1940. Photo: Australian National Maritime Museum via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions)

Salons then rebuilt the room around the job. Wall water heaters, rows of chairs and later backwash basins, where the client leans back and the water runs away from the face, made washing faster and drier, as in the renovated Maribor salon photographed in 1960. The first serious robot came much later, from Panasonic. It showed a hair washing robot at the International Home Care and Rehabilitation Exhibition in Tokyo in 2010 and a new model at the 2011 show. According to Panasonic, that model scanned the shape of the head, washed with 24 fingers under 3D pressure control, added conditioner and a simple dryer, and stored each user's head shape and preferred washing mode.

Hairdressers at work in the renovated salon on Gosposka Street, Maribor, 1960. Photo: unknown author via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Salon basins, robot barbers and fake videos in 2026

Panasonic built the machine for care, for people who have limited mobility or are confined to bed, and in 2012 NBC News described customers trying the 24-fingered Head Care Robot at a salon in Japan. It never became a common sight. In 2026 nearly every salon still washes hair at a row of basins, with an assistant doing by hand what Panasonic tried to copy: warm water and firm circles on the scalp, with a towel ready before the client sits up. In care homes the same job falls to nurses and visiting hairdressers, around beds and wheelchairs.

A stylist washes a client's hair at a salon basin in 2021. Photo: Hair Spies (hairspies.com) / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Most of this year's robot hair news is about cutting, and some of it is not real. On 29 August 2026 ABC7 in San Francisco reported that San Jose barber Taiyadi "Magic" Day, who once cut hair for the San Francisco 49ers, wears five cameras on his head, chest and wrists so Instawork Robotics Lab can record the angles of his hands for robot training. A month later, on 23 September, the fact checkers at Lead Stories published a prebunk warning that viral clips of automatic haircut machines were made with AI video tools. Robots that touch people for money do exist, though; Aescape, for example, uses a pair of robot arms to give massages, which we covered in our post on robot massage.

Two robot arms beside a massage table, Aescape's robot massage system, in 2026. Photo: BrokenSegue / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB does not sell a hair washing robot, and no source shows one of its arms washing hair. Its cobots do have the abilities the job needs. The GoFa CRB 15000 carries up to 5 kg, reaches 950 mm and has torque sensors in each of its six joints, so it can feel contact and stop, and it can be moved by hand to teach a path. ABB has also put GoFa to work at its healthcare research hub in Houston, which develops automation for hospital labs. A research team could mount a soft washing head on such an arm and teach scalp passes by hand, without writing code first, the way our guide to no-code robot programming describes.

A GoFa cobot at ABB's healthcare research hub. Photo: ABB

What a hair washing robot needs before it reaches care homes

The first open problem is water. A salon basin sprays, splashes and drips, and an arm working above it has to survive that every day. ABB's IRB 1300 can be ordered with Foundry Plus 2 protection, rated for water and dust, which shows that sealed robot arms exist; a washing cobot would also need that sealing, plus surfaces that are easy to keep clean. The same questions about water, cleaning and dignity came up in our post on the bathing robot.

An ABB IRB 1300 with Foundry Plus 2 protection, built to handle water and dust. Photo: ABB

Force is the second problem. A scalp is curved and uneven, and pressure that feels good on one head hurts on another. Panasonic answered with 3D pressure control and stored head shapes. A cobot with joint torque sensing could limit how hard it pushes, and force control software could keep a constant light pressure along a curved path, but a head can move at any moment, which a car door on a fixture never does. Any arm that works near eyes, ears and a neck would also need testing under ISO 13482, the safety standard for personal care robots.

Moving an ABB GoFa CRB 15000 by hand. Torque sensors in each joint let it feel contact. Photo: ABB

Hands are the third. Fingers that knead and lift hair are harder to build than a nozzle. ABB has shown GoFa arms fitted with PSYONIC's Ability Hand, a prosthetic hand with touch sensors, which hints at what a dexterous washing tool might look like. Cost will decide the rest: a salon assistant is cheap compared with a certified robot, so the first buyers are more likely to be care homes and hospitals short of staff, where a hair wash can take a nurse away from other patients. For homes, a hair washing robot is still years away.

Two ABB GoFa cobots fitted with PSYONIC Ability Hands, one holding a torque wrench on a metal drive housing. Photo: ABB

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