We have all been there. You are walking home in a absolute downpour. Your hands are crammed with grocery bags. You try to awkwardly clamp your umbrella between your ear and your shoulder like a 1990s businessman. You look ridiculous. You get soaked anyway.
.
But what if your umbrella could just hover above your head like a loyal, rain-blocking drone pet?
Enter John Tse, a Canadian engineer known online as "I Build Stuff." After a solid year of shattering expensive plastic, fixing broken dreams, and coding in frustration, he has officially built a fully autonomous, hands-free flying umbrella.
It looks like a regular yellow umbrella, but it packs enough hidden tech to make Tony Stark sweat.
.
.
The Tech: How It Tracks You Without Chopping Your Face Off
.
This isn't Tse’s first rodeo. He previously built a remote-controlled umbrella drone. It was cool, but it required a second person to pilot it. Unless you can afford a full-time butler to fly your umbrella via joystick, it wasn’t very practical.
The new Flying Umbrella 2.0 is completely self-contained.
.
To make it hands-free, Tse skipped GPS because nobody wants an umbrella that "recalculates" while they are getting drenched. Instead, he slapped on a Time-of-Flight (ToF) depth-sensing camera and a tiny Raspberry Pi computer.
.
This setup scans the area in 3D, locks onto your head, and constantly screams driving commands to the flight controls. It stays perfectly centered above you, tracking your every move like an overattached cartoon ghost.
.
.
Engineering: The Folds, The Snaps, and The Carbon Fiber
.
From a distance, it looks totally normal. Underneath the fabric, however, lies a terrifyingly clever quadcopter drone system.
To prevent the umbrella from being too heavy to lift off, Tse designed custom 3D-printed folding arms made of carbon-fiber nylon.
- The Transformation: The arms use a chaotic mix of tight rubber bands and mechanical hinges to violently snap straight out when it is time to fly.
- The Packing: When the storm clears, you just fold the smart arms back down, and the whole contraption slips cleanly inside a standard backpack.
.
.
The Catch: Why You Can’t Buy One (Yet)
.
Tse successfully tested the prototype in actual heavy rainstorms, proving that the future is truly now. However, do not throw away your cheap gas-station umbrella just yet. The prototype has a few... minor quirks:
- The 10-Minute Limit: The high-power motors eat battery for breakfast. You get about 10 to 15 minutes of flight time before your shield drops and you are soaked again.
- The Blender Factor: You are essentially walking around with four high-speed lawnmower blades spinning millimeters away from your ears. One sudden gust of wind, and you get a very futuristic haircut.
- The Law: Flying an autonomous quadcopter down a crowded city sidewalk will almost certainly get you arrested, or at the very least, featured on a local news segment about neighborhood menaces.
.
Verdict: A Glorious DIY Triumph
.
Even though you won't see these at local tech stores anytime soon, "I Build Stuff" has given us the hero we didn't know we needed.
If you want to watch a man spend a year of his life fighting physics, gravity, and water damage just to avoid holding a stick, check out the chaotic build video on the I Build Stuff YouTube Channel.
https://youtu.be/RKJi9mjMxF8?si=84fAGm8E24q6FXUN
0 comments