Category: Possible inventions

I’m contemplating getting aloft using a paramotor. If the main ‘glider’ (sail-type parachute) fails, one is ordinarily equipped with a reserve chute, but this is of little use at operational flying levels of ~200m.

Today’s invention is therefore a paramotor fan which can tilt from a horizontal axis to a vertical one, when the pilot realises that a crash landing is imminent. It would automatically jettison the glider canopy once the decision to use the motor in this way was made.

Although the fan could never support a pilot’s weight on its own, it could, in an emergency, greatly reduce the rate of descent, especially if driven at an almost self-destructive speed in this last-ditch mode.

When I see windfarms, several questions occur to me -beyond ‘Do we really think these are a viable energy source?’ Why, for example, is all the gearing and generating equipment located 10m in the air?

Today’s invention is a new form of wind turbine. Two sets of turbine blades rotate about a horizontal axis on top of a column. The outer ends of each set of blades are supported by a bevel-geared ring which bears on a vertical-axis bevel gear wheel near the ground. The blades-and-wheel assembly is free to rotate about this vertical axis in response to changes in wind direction, as usual.

As the wind blows, the gearwheel rotates a generator located conveniently near ground level and protected within the support column (which can be a comparatively low-strength structure). No more swinging the whole affair around in the sky.

Today’s invention is a way for ships to avoid being seen at sea.

The ship would carry a large mirror held aloft on stalks.

It would also have a large pontoon supporting metal plates heated directly by the ship’s engines.

This arrangement would generate a synthetic mirage -one in which a distant observer would see a patch of sea, rather than the ship itself.

Today’s invention is a private key encryption device which relies on fluid dynamics.

Highly viscous flow at low velocity is, near-as-dammit, reversible.

Today’s invention is to use an apparatus such as that in the film linked to above. A message (or an image) would be printed into the body of a gel-like material using eg laser-based rapid prototyping techniques.

This would then be subject to a pattern of low speed rotational shear flow, using a rotary system as shown, to obscure the content. This rotation would however be undertaken by an inner cylinder which could move both circumferentially and axially (as controlled by the user’s choice from a large number of screw cam ‘keys’). The gel could then be transported physically anywhere without the message being decipherable.

It might even be possible to send only images of the gel electronically (ie its local contrast distribution). On receipt of the message, it could be decoded by reversing the action of the original key.

Today’s invention is a possible enhancement to existing touch-screens. A stalk-mounted lamp on eg a mobile device casts shadows of one’s fingers onto the screen.

When the shadows are seen by a small embedded camera to lie on certain screen elements, these are primed in the same way that normal rollover scripts work in a webpage.

This allows eg each key displayed on a small cellphone screen to grow as a finger approaches it, in order to make dialling easier.

Today’s invention is a shotgun cartridge which contains a secondary charge (This charge might be radially asymmetrical).

Each cartridge could be set, before loading, so that after a given flight time, this secondary charge would ignite; causing the pellets to be scattered in a pre-determined pattern around the centre of mass of the cartridge.

The pattern could take a variety of geometrical forms -from a diffuse cloud, meant to sting but not damage a target, to an annulus, intended to punch a hole in a partition wall.

Struts are often used in engineering systems, usually mutually cross-braced. Today’s invention attempts to provide these members with a form of adaptive internal strengthening.

Each strut (not necessarily of circular cross-section) has within it a conduit. This contains a strong, light metal rod. The rod can be moved along the conduit by a pneumatic pressure difference created by a pump fitted to one end.

When a strut is stressed, and begins to bend to a specific extent, the periodic passage of its rod may be locally slowed (which can be detected as resistance to the drive pressure, which is then removed in response).

This allows a rod to be automatically positioned at the point of maximal bending -reinforcing it before damage occurs.

When the stress is removed, rods can continue to patrol. A more advanced version of this idea involves the use of multiple reinforcement rods at different locations within each strut.

Today’s invention is a combined knitting and washing machine.

Clothing could all be made in a single sheet design. This would be designed to be completely unravellable, so that it could be pulled into a very small washing machine as a single, long fibre. This would allow washing to occur very efficiently -and also very quickly.

As the fibre emerged from the machine, it could be fed directly into a knitting machine (ie an automated loom). This would recreate some new, flat garment, whose pattern program could be selected from an online catalogue.

One’s entire wardrobe would thus fill only a few sacks of fibre and allow all wearable items to be made on the fly and to fit an individual perfectly. There might even be an intervening re-dyeing step, to change the colour of one’s outfit according to eg the season.

Armored vehicles, such as the bulletproof vehicles used by heads of state are often equipped with reactive armour. When a missile makes an impact, this detonates a surface charge on the vehicle, potentially nullifying the attack.

Today’s invention takes this a step further. When two or more impacts have occurred on such a target, an on-board computer records these and calculates where the most likely subsequent hit will occur (linear extrapolation would be a good first guess).

At this location, reactive armour can become proactive. This might involve firing a shield mechanism so that impact occurs between shield and missile at a greater stand-off distance from the vehicle body (or, it might be possible to populate the outer vehicle surface with protective plates capable of being moved rapidly across it, by a magnetic field pulse, to provide local reinforcement).

Today’s invention is an enhancement to existing aerofoil design.

A motor powers a set of sprocket wheels embedded within the body of an aircraft wing, near the leading edge. This drives a carbon fibre belt, which moves as shown.

This arrangement speeds the flow over the top surface of the aerofoil, without increasing drag on its lower surface, resulting in a significant increase in lift without a large weight increase.

(It also helps reduce ice build-up on wing surfaces).