alt Hacker NewsActually not. My handguard saw will do as well as the sawstop non-destructively (independently tested and verified, so you don't have to take their word for it).
They do it (basically) by predicting whether your hand will touch the blade, rather than waiting until it does touch the blade.
If you wait until someone actually touches the blade, then yes, you have to operate very very fast. That is unavoidable due to physics, as you say.
But if you can gain 100ms or 250ms by proving a 100% probability that the hand will touch the blade before the person can stop it, you now have a lot more time to stop the blade.
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But what can happen that will mean that your finger will touch the blade in a quarter of a second?
I can't think of anything, short of dropping a person on the saw.
How is that going to work reliably with sawdust and the like everywhere? Some kind of radar?
Ive looked at the saw you mention in another comment, and in all honesty Id much rather have a safety precaution that works based on very simple physics (like sawstop) than some black-box ai hand detection algorithm.