Archive for: September 2009

Today’s invention is a low-cost radio controlled toy.

Two aerosol cans filled with compressed air have their necks clipped into a control box with steering levers which can be made to press the button on either can (or both).

The resulting jet(s) is directed onto the ground so as to drive the whole vehicle forwards, turning according to the strength of the left or right airflow. The cans can have a couple of loosely fitting cardboard rings attached, so as to make this turning easier.

Who says that wallpaper has to be as wide as it is? We have decorative (horizontal) wallpaper borders, so why not wallpaper itself?

Today’s invention is strips of (vertical) wallpaper which are much narrower than normal (eg perhaps 12 cm wide).

Although requiring more trips up the ladder, these would have the enormous advantage of being very much easier to paste and hang around tricky surface features (eg corners) than the usual stuff.

Once the first strip was hung correctly, using a plumbline, the others could be very easily butted up against each other. This would obviously work best for paper with a bold, vertical, striped pattern; hiding the joints and making pasting and pattern correspondence between adjacent strips very easy.

Today’s invention is a way to reduce the noise nuisance caused by ‘cruising’ cars with loud music systems.

It is an automatic volume control which turns down one’s in-car entertainment in correspondence with a combination of factors: a) the degree to which the windows are open b) the lateness of the hour c) the proximity of hospitals and nursing homes d) the slowness with which the car is being driven.

When the volume or any of the latter four factors is sensed to be on the increase, then the windows automatically close tightly.

If some young person wants to drive fast during daylight with the windows rolled up and miles from anywhere then they are welcome to ‘pump up the volume’ -otherwise I decline to share their taste in audio.

I’m always boiling more water in the kettle than I need. This wastes huge amounts of both water and energy.

Today’s invention provides a fairly simple way to limit this bad habit. An inlet pipe to a small cistern is sealed against a kitchen’s cold water tap. The tap is left in the open position but water can only flow from the tap when a handle is depressed: as in normal bathroom cistern operation.

The difference here is that the internal ballcock is capable of being set by an external dial so as to allow water to flow through in multiples of 1 cupful.

You can thus place the kettle beneath the outlet, dial up ‘four cups’ and only that amount flows into the kettle. Much easier than squinting at a meniscus through a steamy window in the kettle wall as you attempt to hold the whole thing in mid air.

When a vehicle, say a landing aircraft, hits the brakes in an emergency, it’s usually in danger of becoming unstable, inverting and creating an even more dangerous collision.

Today’s invention is therefore an auxilliary, when-all-else-fails braking system.

When the brakes are applied very sharply, ultra sticky foam, of the type used experimentally as a non-lethal weapon, is automatically sprayed from a small tank beside each wheel.

This expands in milliseconds and causes the wheel to slow further in a controlled way, due to its extreme viscosity and adhesion. This foam grips the ground as well as the rotating components pretty nearly equally on both sides of the vehicle and it will also serve to snuff out any sparks which conventional brakes may be generating.

When big vehicles make slow turns, sometimes the process can be dangerous.

The diagram shows the area between the dotted and solid curved lines which is swept out by an articulated lorry.

Today’s invention is to equip these vehicles with a number of roof-mounted spotlights which shine eg red light onto the ground. These are directed, by data on of the current steering wheel position, to illuminate the road area which is about to be swept through.

If people or other vehicles find themselves located in this brightly coloured light, it’s time to pull back to safety.

This system might also be useful to learner drivers, for whom every vehicle feels like a behemoth.

Running on a treadmill tends to lack much competitive ‘edge’. Certainly, it’s no spectator sport. Today’s invention is therefore intended to offer indoor runners a new form of challenge.

Two running machines would be placed with the runners facing each other. The rollers supporting the belts would be connected by an ‘active differential’ gearbox.

This would be electronically controlled so that as one runner speeds up, so he or she increases, slightly, the resistance of the other’s machine (or even the gradient of the belt).

The gearing would be programmable so that runners of different types could compete against each other. The first one to press the ‘yield’ button would disconnect the machines and lose the competition.

A sprinter, for example, might try tactically to wear down a marathon runner quickly by accelerating away, but if that failed he would then find himself in for an unusually prolonged race.

Now that tidal energy looks like it may be commercially viable in certain locations, there is increasing pressure to ensure that devices such as subsea turbine blades create as little damage as possible to the local fish population (the danger is that thrashing blades might well form currents strong enough to drag fish towards them and chop up significant numbers).

What is needed is an underwater scarecrow. Rather than just use a source of loud noises (whose vibration probably disturbs marine mammals too), today’s invention is a simulated predator.

This would take the form of a sinuously moving multi-section raft on the water surface, moored to the turbine in question. This could be caused to wave backwards and forwards by a small motor and would look from below like the silhouette of a large hunting fish, such as a shark.

Today’s invention is a way automatically to ensure that one’s satellite dish or tv aerial are optimally orientated.

The receiver in question would be fitted with a couple of small motors, one for each degree of freedom (ie probably no more than two).

These would be controlled by having a camera observe the screen and compare the degree of difference between a known, testcard image and the one currently being broadcast. The system would then run the motors until any disparity was minimised.

This could be arranged to occur continuously and thus maintain picture quality even during stormy atmospheric conditions.

Today’s invention is a small, radio-controlled vehicle with rubber wheels containing powerful magnets.

These allow this small car to travel automatically over the outer metal surfaces of a normal car, checking for indentations or other damage. This could work well as a monitor for hired vehicles, being able to detect dents rapidly -damage that a driver might fail to even notice.

The sCARab could also act as a camera platform, snapping anyone in contact with the host vehicle and then hiding under the floorpan whilst calling the owner or police.

Such a device, equipped with a coloured paint pen and eraser, could create a constantly-changing pattern on the surface of the vehicle.