Baldness detecting drones may soon be a thing?

Ningen (人間株式会社, ningen kabushiki gaisha), the advertising company behind that video from a few months ago showing off EDM created using female pubic hair is back, and this time they’ve come up with a needlessly complicated way to find out if you’re starting to go bald.

What Ningen has come up with is an invention called “Kami no Otsuge,” which due to kami meaning both “god(s)” and “hair,” can either mean “The messenger of the gods” or “The messenger of hair.” This appropriately named invention is a drone that is designed to to very discreetly let men know that they are beginning to lose their hair through the use of a downward pointing camera and a precisely aimed special speaker. Sound like a ridiculous and overly complicated idea? Well, it is. But that’s what Ningen is good at.

Of course, Ningen released a video promoting their baldness detecting drone and in the video, they conduct an experiment to test whether their drone actually works.

The video begins by quickly explaining the reasoning behind this silly invention. It notes that the sooner you treat thinning hair the better chance you have at stopping hair-loss. Unfortunately, the first signs of thinning hair can be hard to spot since it often starts showing up at the top of your head. So Ningen came up with the idea of using a drone to help men who are unaware that they are starting to go bald.

So how does this baldness detection system work? First of all, the drone has a camera attached to it. This camera is pointed at the ground so that it can spot thin haired individuals as it hovers in the sky.

A “professional drone pilot” is the one that controls the drone.

The video that the drone shoots is viewed in real-time by a doctor who specializes in treating hair-loss.

Also on the drone is a high-tech directional speaker that has the ability to focus sound and deliver it to a specific target. Thus, anyone not in the “line-of-fire” of the speaker is unable to overhear the message.

If the doctor decides that the person in the video he is watching exhibits signs of thinning hair then he gives the signal and the fancy speaker sends a prerecorded message informing the unknowing man on the ground.

The message that is beamed down from the drone was recorded by Ano-chan, a member of the popular Japanese idol group Yurumerumo! The video explains they picked her because they thought her cute voice might soften the blow of finding out you’re going bald. The message she recorded translates as follows.

“Can you hear me? Can you hear me? I am the Goddess of hair. It’s Ano here. Woah! You’re bald!”

But can this thing actually do what is claimed? In order to find this out, Ningen did an experiment. They started out by making nine men stand in a field as the drone flew over them.

The experiment they conduct in the video has two phases. In the first stage they simply try to see if the drone can detect any men with thinning hair. Due to it being windy, the pilot has a bit of trouble maneuvering the drone, however, after a bit of careful piloting, the doctor is able to identify three men exhibiting hair-loss. So phase 1 is a success.

After this the experiment enters phase 2. In this part they try to test whether the speaker is able to deliver the warning message to one of the balding men without others overhearing it.

This time they place one of the guys with thinning hair in the middle of the nine man formation and they tell the men to raise their hands if they are able to hear the message.

Unfortunately, the first attempt doesn’t work. The man doesn’t hear the message and so they raise the pitch of the recording since they had noticed in their research that higher pitched sound seemed to be more easily audible.

They try again and beam the now chipmunk-esque version of Ano-chan’s recording and sure enough, it works! Only the targeted guy raises his hand. Interestingly though, by raising his hand the guy just announced to everyone that ha’s going bald…

So given the success of this ridiculous experiment, will Japan soon have an army of drones flying around its skies looking for men showing signs of hair-loss? Probably not. This whole thing just appears to be a publicity stunt for hageryman.jp, a website about hair-loss and hair-loss treatment. Also, if you believe what they say in the video, this whole thing was rather pricey and Ningen ended up going over their budget. So for now, guys may just need to stick to mirrors and pictures to check the tops of their heads.

If you’d like to watch this hair-loss detecting drone in action, then check out the video below.

Source: ningentube

Images: 薄毛確認飛行物体「カミノオツゲ」 – ドローン×指向性スピーカーで薄毛を空から早期発見する近未来実験 (ningentube)