A Canadian engineer named John Tse recently went viral for something that sounds like it belongs in a sci-fi film: a flying umbrella that hovers over its owner and follows them hands-free, using a depth-sensing camera and onboard AI to track a person through space. It’s not a one-off oddity. It’s part of a genuine pattern this year — individual engineers, working largely alone or with small independent studios, building real, physical solutions to mundane daily problems using drone tech, magnets and machine vision, then documenting the whole process on YouTube and Kickstarter rather than through a corporate product department. Here are three of 2026’s best examples, and the people actually behind them.
John Tse’s Flying Umbrella — “I Build Stuff”
Tse’s autonomous umbrella keeps the familiar shape of an ordinary umbrella but hides quadcopter drone hardware just beneath the canopy: four propellers mounted on a custom internal frame provide lift and control, the same basic principle as any consumer drone. The tracking system went through several iterations before Tse landed on a time-of-flight depth camera — a sensor that measures how emitted light bounces back to build a real 3D picture of where a person is standing, which works even in low light, unlike a standard camera or GPS-based tracking.
Battery life currently sits at 10 to 15 minutes, enough for a short walk and little else, and Tse himself frames the whole project as a proof-of-concept rather than a finished commercial product — there’s no announced price, manufacturing plan, or company behind it. Tse documents the build on his YouTube channel, I Build Stuff, where he posts experimental robotics and hardware projects as a solo engineer and filmmaker. The umbrella was originally prototyped in 2024, with Tse adding the autonomous-follow tracking system this year specifically in response to viewer requests — a genuinely responsive, community-driven development cycle that a corporate product roadmap rarely allows for.
Simone Giertz’s Laundry Chair — Yetch Studio
Giertz, a Swedish inventor widely known for her earlier YouTube era of deliberately “shitty robots,” has spent recent years building genuinely well-designed, buildable products through her own studio, Yetch. Her latest, the Laundry Chair, solves a real and universally recognizable problem: where half-worn clothes go when they’re not quite dirty enough for the hamper but not clean enough to put back in the drawer. The chair’s answer is a built-in rotating rail on a solid hardwood frame with 100% cotton corduroy upholstery, letting worn clothes hang neatly on a swivel arm instead of piling onto the nearest surface.
The Laundry Chair launched on Kickstarter on March 16, 2026, priced between $899 and $999 depending on pledge tier, and became one of the most viral crowdfunding campaigns of the year — 1,281 backers pledged more than $1.26 million, far beyond its funding goal. Unlike Tse’s still-experimental umbrella, this is a real, funded, soon-to-ship consumer product, built by Giertz’s own design studio rather than a licensing deal with a larger furniture company — a genuinely independent path from viral video to manufactured object.
Colin Furze’s Magnetic-Suspension Hoverboard — Solo, UK
Furze, a UK-based inventor with one of YouTube’s longest-running individual maker channels, spent early 2026 building something people have wanted since the 1989 film that popularized the idea: a board that genuinely floats. His approach uses real physics rather than movie magic — neodymium disc magnets mounted in a lower chassis repel matching magnets on the underside of the rider’s deck, and because like magnetic poles push apart rather than attract, the top platform is suspended in mid-air above the base by magnetic force alone.
The project evolved from an initial skateboard design into a longboard specifically because the finished magnetic assembly was too heavy and bulky to ollie — a practical engineering compromise Furze made mid-build rather than a planned outcome. The hardest problem wasn’t the levitation itself but keeping the floating deck steerable: Furze replaced round guide pins with square steel tubes and custom 3D-printed bearing sleeves to keep the magnets aligned while still allowing controlled side-to-side movement. From a rider’s perspective — and in the resulting footage — it looks and reportedly feels exactly like a real hoverboard, since the magnetic mechanism is hidden entirely beneath the deck.
What Connects All Three
None of these three projects came out of a corporate R&D lab, and that’s the actual story worth paying attention to. Tse, Giertz and Furze each work independently or through their own small studios, film the entire build process — including the failures — and put the finished result directly in front of an audience that can fund it, request features, or simply watch the engineering unfold. That’s a genuinely different invention pipeline than the traditional model of a company quietly developing a product behind closed doors before a polished launch event. It also means these projects can move faster and take stranger risks than a corporate product team typically could — nobody at a company greenlights “flying umbrella” or “magnetic hoverboard” through a normal approval process, but an individual engineer with a camera and an audience can simply build one and see what happens.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is John Tse’s flying umbrella available to buy?
No — it remains a proof-of-concept project with no announced commercial plans, price, or manufacturer.
Can you actually buy Simone Giertz’s Laundry Chair?
Yes — it funded on Kickstarter in March 2026 for $899-$999 per unit, backed by more than $1.26 million from 1,281 backers, through her own studio, Yetch.
How does Colin Furze’s hoverboard actually work?
Repelling neodymium magnets suspend the rider’s deck above a lower chassis with no physical contact between the two platforms, while a steering mechanism using guide pins and bearing sleeves keeps the board controllable.
Are any of these three projects backed by a major tech company?
No — all three are independently built and funded, either solo (Tse, Furze) or through the creator’s own small studio (Giertz’s Yetch).
The Bottom Line
What John Tse, Simone Giertz and Colin Furze have in common isn’t the specific problem each is solving — staying dry, storing half-worn clothes, and recreating a 1989 movie prop are three very different goals. It’s that all three chose to build the actual physical thing themselves, in public, funded and shaped directly by an audience, rather than waiting for a company to greenlight it. That’s a real and growing model for how genuinely novel personal technology gets made in 2026 — one engineer, one camera, and enough viewers willing to fund the next build.
