Astronauts on the space station have to live with no real definition of ‘up‘.

Today’s invention is to replace each of the many signs on board by a small, square electronic display. These displays would have a camera on board with face detection capability.

On spotting the face of an astronaut, a sign would be able to orientate its text and graphical message to match the crew member’s current alignment.

If you are felling trees in a remote wilderness and your truck breaks down, it can be life-threatening.

Today’s invention is an emergency vehicle designed to be formed from a small wooden platform and two (or more) chainsaws.

The saws are therefore designed to accommodate a steel band which fits over each set of teeth, transforming them into a passable caterpillar track.

They can then be clamped, using their integral fittings, onto any board (if necessary, one cut from a big tree) and the resulting vehicle used to get eg an injured person back to base safely, using the remote throttle cable controls shown.

When running, I notice that if I take off my outer, waterproof jacket, I have no option other than to wrap the arms around my waist and tie a knot in them,

This is a bad way to treat the garment and tends to destroy the waterproffing in the area that is repeatedly knotted.

Today’s invention is therefore a running jacket whose arms have corresponding long strips of velcro on the outside of one and the inside of the other.

This would allow them to be wrapped about my waist, adjustable in a continuous way, and held there firmly, without having to pause in my already slow, barefoot progress.

I object to the fact that huge acreages of the UK’s roads are now bounded by painted no-parking lines. They are truly ugly and don’t seem to have that much effect on people who are too thick not to understand if they are causing an obstruction.

In addition, the cost of maintaining millions of metres of road paint is enormous.

Today’s invention is to have any such parking restriction symbols projected onto the road surface by streetlights which are almost always overhead in such urban zones.

Each streetlight could be fitted with a lens and some computer-controlled, coloured filters.

This would allow parking regulations to be timed more flexibly and the symbols would be visible even on snowy days.

The extra cost of running the lights during daylight hours could be minimised by using high efficiency lamps and projecting eg a row of bright blobs rather than continuous lines.

No more road closures would be required for the endless task of paint burning and upgrading.

Many industries rely on being able to abrade or erode large areas of material in order to prepare for coating or to reduce weight by thinning.

Today’s invention is a small robot device consisting of a mobile milling head on the outside of a skin or bulkhead and a mobile ultrasound sensor, moving in step with it, on the other side.

This would allow material to be removed in an automated but controlled way so that the sensor could determine the remaining local thickness and instruct the mill head when to move to the next target area.

There would also be a narrow vacuum hose to remove the abraded particles.

I’ve joked before that hunting will only be a sport when the animals are equipped with weapons.

Today’s invention is a truly sporting rifle.

Instead of being camouflaged, this would have a number of small screens attached, each displaying moving, coloured patterns and with the potential to emit sounds.

The telescopic sight would have a camera embedded within it.

These add-ons would handicap the hunter in a quantifiable way. Users of such rifles would find it more challenging to approach a game animal but when sufficiently close, they would have the option to kill it or photograph it.

For people who don’t need to eat game, I’m hoping that creating an image of such a creature, with their sights superimposed and details of their increased visibility at the time embedded, would allow more bragging rights than returning with a corpse.

This would thus help preserve the lives of many wild animals.

It seems that if you have to move from room to room whilst remembering even simple items, the doorways themselves can trigger forgetting of the crucial data.

Today’s invention is therefore a small recorder which can be attached to a door (for use within eg stockrooms or on board ships)

As you approach the door, simply say what your current task is eg “find the yellow-handled screwdriver.”

On emerging through the doorway, a speaker on that side would repeat the message, keeping you on track.

Today’s invention is a fountain pen incorporating a small, battery-driven fan.

When one has written using the pen, the fan starts up and directs a stream of air leftwards or rightwards to dry the ink before smudging can occur.

Trucks which pull out and pass each other create enormous drag effects.

Today’s invention tries to minimise these.

Each of the thre trucks driving up the page is equipped with an oval-section trailer. A continuous curtain runs in very low friction rails at the top and bottom edge of the trailer.

Each curtain is driven by a small motor clockwise or anticlockwise, depending on the direction of the curtain to the left (which would be sensed optically, on approach).

In this way, the normal Couette flow between trailers is avoided, since the curtains maintain a flat velocity profile between trucks which overtake each other with small relative velocities.

According to Targeting Innovation 4.8 billion people have a mobile phone while only 4.2 billion own a toothbrush.

Given the general health benefits of oral hygiene, today’s invention offers a way to combine these two devices.

Each basic mobile phone (with a protuberant aerial) would come supplied with a rounded crocodile clip on the end.

This would be used to secure a natural brush, such as a thistle, burdock or a clump of wool to the end of the antenna.

Engaging the phone’s vibrate mode would create a primitive but effective buzzing, similar to that of electric toothbrushes, and enabling a more effective tooth cleaning regime.