Future Gadget #2: Bamboo Helicam#
| Designation | Future Gadget #2 |
| Common name | Bamboo Helicam |
| Function | Head-mounted camera drone (detachable) |
| Inventors | Itaru Hashida, Rintaro Okabe |
| Rotor | Single coaxial pair, 18 cm |
| Camera | 0.3 MP CMOS, composite out |
| Flight endurance | 11 seconds (record) |
| Control | 27 MHz AM radio, borrowed from an RC car |
| Injuries caused | 1 (minor, self-inflicted, Okabe) |
| Status | Grounded pending "rotor renaissance" |
Future Gadget #2, the Bamboo Helicam, is a head-mounted detachable camera drone: a propeller beanie that takes off. The wearer walks around with a rotor assembly clipped to a helmet; on command, the assembly detaches, ascends, and streams grainy video of the wearer's bald spot to a CRT in the lab. It is the lab's first flying machine, its first camera platform, and its first product recall, all within the same week.
The design brief, as written on the whiteboard and never erased: "personal airborne perspective at zero notice." Daru wanted an overhead camera for crowded convention halls; Okabe wanted something that looked like it came from a future where surveillance is whimsical. The compromise was a coaxial rotor unit that lives on the wearer's head — pre-positioned for launch, in the sense that a hat is pre-positioned.
The launch sequence is genuinely clever: the rotors spin up while still clipped in, the clip releases at operating RPM, and the airframe rises with the camera already recording. The landing sequence is the part that was, in the language of the incident report, never actually designed.
Flight log summary
- Flight 1 — 4 s, wall
- Flight 2 — 7 s, other wall
- Flight 3 — 11 s, ceiling fan interaction
- Flight 4 — 9 s, out the window, recovered from Mr. Braun's awning
- Flight 5 — grounded by unanimous vote
Sortable spec table; hover a header to sort.
| Parameter | Value | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Rotor diameter | 18 | cm |
| All-up mass | 96 | g |
| Hover power | 14 | W |
| Battery capacity | 350 | mAh |
| Theoretical endurance | 95 | s |
| Achieved endurance | 11 | s |
| Video latency | 0.4 | s |
| Cost, parts | 4,800 | ¥ |
The gap between theoretical and achieved endurance is the story of the
gadget. Hover time was never the limit — walls were. The 27 MHz control
link, borrowed from an RC car, has no proportional control: the rotor unit
is always either climbing at full power or falling. Daru's control law,
documented in a comment as // good luck, toggles between these states
several times a second, which in practice traces a flight path best
described as enthusiastic Brownian motion.
Flight 3's ceiling fan interaction embedded a rotor blade in the lab's corkboard, 40 cm from Mayuri's head. FG #2 is grounded indoors by standing order, and the corkboard hole is preserved as a safety memorial.
A 0.3-megapixel CMOS module scavenged from a discontinued toy, chosen for mass, not quality. Faces judged "recognizable at 2 m in good light, mood-dependent beyond that."
Analog composite video over a 1.2 GHz transmitter — technically requiring a license the lab technically does not have. Received on the lab's rabbit- ear CRT, which explains the permanent tinfoil sculpture on the windowsill.
Flight 4's footage — a spiraling shot of Akihabara's skyline, ending in awning — remains the most-rewatched tape in the lab. It has genuine accidental beauty. It is also evidence, which is why it stays in the lab.
Daru's revival proposal replaces the AM link with 2.4 GHz proportional control, doubles the battery, and adds — this is the load-bearing feature — a landing mode. The proposal has been "next month's project" for eleven consecutive months. It is affectionately tracked on the lab's whiteboard as #wip and referenced in the handbook's section on scope discipline.
FG #2's spiritual descendants are everywhere now — see Quadcopter for what the industry did with the concept once actual engineers got involved. Within the lab's canon, the Helicam matters as the first gadget with a sensor: the moment the lab started building things that observe the world rather than merely gesture at it, a straight line that runs through the Divergence Meter to the PhoneWave itself. Not bad for a hat.