Rain? It’s a lot less bother with a hover!
IT is a very British struggle – battling through wind and rain while trying to stay dry beneath a flimsy umbrella.
But this could soon be a thing of the past – after a Japanese company unveiled a parasol mounted on a drone.
The device over the owner’s head to protect them from the sun, and the company plans to launch a version capable of keeping out the rain.
Fitted with a camera which tracks the owner, the umbrella will always hover at the right height above a person’s head.
The concept was born after the president of the company behind the device tired of constantly grappling with a brolly.
Kenji Suzuki, head of Japanese company Asahi Power Service, said: ‘I decided to develop it as I don’t like to hold an umbrella.’
But the ‘Free Parasol’ – a nod to its handsfree nature – is set to come at a hefty cost, with a current planned price of around £200. It will be a similar size to a traditional umbrella, opening out to 59 inches.
But the space where a handle would normally sit is instead home to a drone, programmed to follow the user’s head.
The drone-powered sunshade will be released next year – yet because of regulations surrounding where and how the technology can be used, the company initially expects the devices to only be used in private spaces, such as golf courses.
They believe the shade will be popular with golfers who do not want to walk around a course with an umbrella in tow.
In its current state, the device can only fly for about five minutes before needing to be charged again, but the company hopes to later extend the umbrella’s running time to at least 20 minutes by making it lighter.
The first prototype we made was just a drone attached to a regular umbrella,’ Mr Suzuki said.
‘We are now testing the third-generation prototype and trying to overcome [the technological challenges of] hovering in a stable manner above the head of the user and then chasing them. The announcement came as a British robotics expert has said the regulation of privately owned drones is in ‘chaos’. Professor Noel Sharkey of the University of Sheffield said there were potentially ‘hundreds of thousands’ of the gadgets in the UK, with little being done to contain the technology.
Prof Sharkey is the co-author of a report, Drones in the Service of Society, which calls for comprehensive regulation of the devices to address safety and privacy issues.