Humans have been battling rain for so long as we’ve been round, and one way or the other the umbrella is the most suitable choice we’ve provide you with for maintaining (largely) dry. There must be a greater resolution, which Ivan Miranda has doubtlessly created by throwing more technology on the downside.

Yes, umbrellas are low-cost and collapse so that they’re simple to hold, however they’re additionally fragile and vulnerable to falling aside when confronted with the slightest breeze. And whereas they’re good for maintaining the rain off your head, all that water dripping off the sting of the umbrella’s cover often finally ends up elsewhere in your physique. Umbrellas are actually nothing greater than an over-engineered palm leaf, and for a species that’s efficiently despatched people to the moon and robots to different planets, we’ve seemingly actually given up on enhancing how we keep dry within the rain.

Not all of us, although. Ivan Miranda is a proficient maker who shares their creations—which embrace all the things from a 3D-printed tank they will really climb inside and drive, to an all-terrain skateboard—on their YouTube channel. For their upgraded umbrella, Miranda skips the collapsible cover concept altogether and as a substitute focuses on making a wearable machine that manifests a disc of high-speed air over their head that deflects raindrops as they fall.

Watching their whole artistic course of is as entertaining as the ultimate product. Their first makes an attempt concerned 3D-printing an impeller powered by an electrical motor used for RC planes that will push air outwards and away from their head when the setup was mounted to a helmet. However, 3D printing is an imperfect course of, leading to unbalanced impellers that vibrated so violently it really affected Miranda’s imaginative and prescient whereas the machine was strapped to his head.

The eventual resolution was to commerce the 3D-printed impeller for a pre-built (and completely balanced) ducted fan meeting, which is usually used to create RC planes with high-power jet engines. Air is sucked in by means of the ducted fan’s opening atop their head and directed down and outwards by means of a skinny 360-degree exhaust slit. The highly effective blast from the ducted fan does precisely what it was designed to do, making a curtain of air throughout Miranda that deflects falling water away (a backyard hose was used for testing) however the resolution does include some trade-offs. Not solely will everybody inside a 10-foot radius of Miranda really feel the exhaust and be pelted with deflected rain, however the turbine engine is extremely loud when working at sufficient pace to maintain the rain away. You’d get to the place you have been going dry, however as a substitute of coping with a moist umbrella whenever you bought there, you’d be coping with ringing in your ears and potential listening to loss.