Autonomous flying umbrella follows and shields users from rain and sunlight

I saw this on Facebook before I saw it here. While it bears a superficial resemblance to 1000s of clickbaity tech stunts this one really delighted me. Some of these should be edited into a remastered release of Blade Runner.

IMO it's worth watching the video rather than reading someone's writeup of it. My favorite part is this (written) list of everything that went wrong [1] ... and how much of it is due to the intersection of hardware, software, vendors, and linux

[1] https://youtu.be/EYRrUiM_A6g?si=T60tAChuo-GNtfqW&t=921

Following the Ukraine war has basically made me flinch at the sight and sound of drones.

I think this is in the category of excess application of technology

noise, autonomy are real constraints. And the wind resistance is a safety critical issue. To make it wind resistant you need to increase the drone's power/weight ratio which works against battery life/autonomy and weight (more battery, more weight) This is a nice technical experiment but cannot work as a general public product in my opinion (I build drones since 2013 and know this topic in depth)

The kid would appear to have a future job opportunity at Cyberdyne Systems.

And drenches them in sound

Bonus: free hairdryer!

That's really cool honestly. This took me back to around 2017 when everyone was into hardware startups.

Good for a haircut too.

>what was supposedly a small project ended up big and complicated

Welcome to the drone world! So many moving parts and one tiny mistake, you end up losing a $60k drone in the ocean (true story!)

That being said, regulations prevent flying drones of any size above people, unless the drone is high to certain altitude, because of all the dangers that bring, a small issues and the props will harm them.

Cool project tho!