Funbrella: making rain fun

Rain changes its complexion based on the time and the place. Each aspect of rain provides a unique impression, so experiencing it in distant places and different times would be a new way of sharing information. To represent rain, we focused on an umbrella as a user interface to connect humans and rain. Generally, people experience rain with sounds, sights, or sometimes smells; however, in our proposed system, we exploit the vibration perceived through an umbrella's handle to let people feel the rain. We implemented a vibration-giving mechanism based on a speaker and microphone not only to give vibrations but also to record them so that they reconstruct rain. Using this mechanism, we propose a novel umbrella-like user interface named "Funbrella" that can record and replay the rain with FUN (Figure 1). We developed two interesting applications. One is to feel various kinds of rain, and the other transmits rain to different places in real time. With such applications, people can enjoy rain that is usually annoying.