Amid the veritable downpour of CES coverage this week, we were interested to see a gadget that is tentatively set to launch in 2050. Quentin's Debaene's hypothetical "AIRBLOW 2050" umbrella concept is worthy of James Dyson himself... at least to the extent that the French design student hopes his design will be deemed so: it looks like he's entered it into the British innovator's eponymous annual awards program.
Once Debaene had identified the fabric portion of the umbrella as the root of all of its problems, the solution was clear as day: to get rid of the bulky, easily inverted membrane entirely. Instead, a vacuum draws air through the telescoping shaft to deflect raindrops around a small radius of the device, creating an invisible overhead barrier to the elements. (Besides describing what it does, its somewhat dubious name seems to be a play on "Airblade.")
