Japanese Umbrella Is One Huge Speaker

Japanese researchers in Japan have developed a clever way to turn an entire umbrella into one giant speaker. Made of bamboo and paper, the Oto-Shigure uses a built-in amplifier connected to four tiny vibrating motors located on the tips of the umbrella. And before you imagine the streets of Tokyo turned into one giant cacophony of sounds, the cool thing about this invention is that the music can’t be heard by anyone except the person under the umbrella:

As you can see in the graphic, its design produces a three-dimensional sound bubble in the area right in the centre of the Oto-Shigure. The inventors, Yusuke Kamiyama and Mai Tanaka, are now showing the prototype and, if there’s enough interest, they plan to sell it for just $US100. [Pink Tentacle]