July 5, 2026
Forecast: 100% chance of chaos
Autonomous flying umbrella follows and shields users from rain and sunlight
A real-life flying umbrella has fans screaming ‘cool’ and critics yelling ‘lawsuit’
TLDR: A maker built a real umbrella that hovers over people and follows them to block rain and sun, proving the idea actually works. Commenters split between loving the goofy sci-fi vibe and joking that a flying blade over your head sounds less like convenience and more like an accident report.
The internet has officially met its main-character rain gear: a bright yellow umbrella that doesn’t just open, it flies above you and follows your head around so you stay dry and shaded hands-free. Maker John Tse spent nearly a year turning a normal-looking umbrella into a hovering drone, packing it with cameras, sensors, a tiny computer, folding arms, and plenty of trial-and-error chaos. And honestly? The comments are having way more fun than the umbrella probably should.
A lot of people were straight-up delighted. One commenter said it brought back the glory days of 2017 hardware startup madness, when every weird gadget felt like the future. Another compared it to something that belongs in a remastered Blade Runner, basically crowning this thing cyberpunk couture. But the mood wasn’t all dreamy sci-fi applause. One of the loudest reactions was pure dark comedy: “Good for a haircut too.” That one joke pretty much sums up the nervous laughter hanging over the thread, because yes, this is still a spinning-propeller umbrella hovering over your skull.
Then came the practical crowd with the record scratch. One commenter warned that drone rules generally don’t allow flying over people because, well, falling machines with spinning blades are bad news, even sharing a horror story about losing a $60,000 drone in the ocean. Others said the real star is the creator’s video, especially the brutally relatable list of everything that broke along the way. So the verdict? Half magical future, half airborne lawsuit, fully entertaining.
Key Points
- •John Tse of I Build Stuff created an autonomous flying umbrella that hovers above a user and follows them to provide cover from rain and sunlight.
- •The device disguises drone hardware within a standard umbrella form and uses four propellers mounted on a custom internal frame.
- •To keep the umbrella portable and stable, the design uses folding propeller arms with locking mechanisms built from hinges, rubber bands, and custom plates.
- •Autonomous tracking is achieved with a time-of-flight depth camera and Raspberry Pi, which detect the user’s head position in 3D and send commands to the flight controller.
- •After nearly a year of development and multiple hardware and software failures, the project successfully hovered, followed a person, and operated in heavy rain.