Pileus: The Internet-Ready Umbrella

It's an Internet-ready umbrella, though it's not quite ready for production yet. The Pileus started as an academic research project of Media Design at Keio University Okude Lab in the Spring of 2006. However, it's now been spun off into its own business.

Quite a bit more sophisticated than the "Rain Pod" I wrote about earlier, the Pileus allows users to view websites while walking down the street. By using a small projector, images are displayed on a screen on the underside of the umbrella.

Pileus has a built-in camera, a motion sensor, GPS, and a digital compass. A user can take photo with a camera on the umbrella, and pictures are uploaded to Flickr in two minutes with context tags via a wireless connection. The user can also watch photostreams from Flickr.

Using the GPS unit and Google Earth, the Pileus can also display a bird's-eye view of the user.

While this is all cool, the Pileus' projector is still too bulky and power-hungry for production. And a more general purpose Internet browsing function would be cool (though how a user could type would be beyond me).

I'd also wonder just how many collisions will occur on the street if everyone's looking up at their umbrella's underside instead of watching where they are going. I honestly don't know, beyond the cool factor, just how practical this product would be.