Home 2010 (Page 3)

Year: 2010

#1444: PeekPanel

I’ve been watching various electronic displays during the recent snowy conditions in the UK. These rarely have wipers of any kind.

It seems to me that today’s invention should be a public information display which senses how much of its output is being obscured by snow or mud or whatever and squeezes the message into the part of the display which is not yet affected.

This could be done by mild distortion of the characters so as to fit the clear part of the screen and/or by preferentially showing those data which have been previously tagged as most salient (perhaps cycling these so that all of the message is seen sequentially).

#1443: BumpMaps

Today’s invention is a smartphone application which allows realtime measurement of the frequency with which potholes are being driven through in a given region.

Motorists would attach their smartphones firmly to the dashboard. Every time a pothole was driven through, the vertical acceleration would be detected and the location sent to a central database belonging to the roads authority in question.

When displayed on a map, effects such as temporary ramps could be excluded from consideration, allowing holes in the road to be prioritised for repair on the basis of the number of drivers affected and the severity of the bumps.

#1442: ChariotRacer

Most people will never compete in a major sporting event and yet many will pay heavily just to be present at one.

Today’s invention is a way for ordinary people to be more involved -not quite competing but close to the action.

It is a wheeled platform which allows a spectator to stand on it and be propelled alongside eg runners in a track race or even swimmers in a pool (without interfering too much with the race itself). They would thus not only be participants in the making of sporting history, but also gain a better insight into the almost superhuman performances of professional athletes.

Spectators might pay a large amount to actually be among the competitors or be chosen by lottery.

#1441: Thrustum

Obsessive as I am about tracked vehicles (almost as much as helicopters and electric paramotors), today’s invention is a new form of trackless, cross-country vehicle drive.

The tracks on tractors, tanks etc would be replaced by a large number of conical drive elements (each heavily-textured to provide grip). Each cone (frustum) would have a hard rubber ring at its base. On the left side, this is shown as acting as a wheel, on the right side the cone is lowered into position for optimal grip on rough terrain.

This arrangement allows wheeled operation for high speed, manoeuvrability and low damage on roads. It also enables the vehicle, with lowered, conical wheels forming a drive strip on each side, to get nearly as good grip as with tracks, but with much less susceptibility to damage.

Each of the cones could be individually powered and independently sprung, raised and lowered.

#1440: MilkShake

Parcels tend to get handled roughly in transit -especially when marked ‘fragile’, it seems.

Today’s invention makes use of this sad fact to supply the energy required to make a speciality product.

Light but sturdy plastic containers would be filled with milk, sealed, placed in cardboard boxes and shipped around eg the US. After a day or so of rough handling, they would arrive at the point of sale -as butter.

#1439: Skipogo

Today’s invention is a combination of two old favourites -the pogo stick and the skipping rope.

The rope is replaced by a rigid hoop, the ends of which are attached to the pogo stick’s handlebars and which are driven overhead by a small motor.

The direction and speed of the motor can be determined by the user or set to operate randomly, so that the user is challenged to jump the stick over the rope -and thus improve their fitness and coordination.

#1438: RocketRound

Today’s invention is a way to boost the speed of a tank.

The vehicle in question carries a number of shells containing solid rocket propellant. This would be specially formulated to allow relatively slow-burning, sustained-thrust output.

When an extra burst of acceleration is required, the tank’s main gun is rotated to point behind it and a series of these special shells is fired. The resulting exhaust from the gun barrel provides enough drive to eg force a tank through some barrier or out of boggy terrain.

#1437: FallPhone

Cats can adjust their moments of inertia as they fall from a height so that they tend to land feet first.

Today’s invention exploits this thinking by equipping eg cellphones with mutipart batteries (or other masses) which can be driven rapidly from place to place within the casing.

If a phone (or other fragile, portable electronic device) is dropped, for example, the accelerometers on board, which would normally just switch it off before impact, detect the axes of spin and move the battery masses so as to orientate the device (since rotational momentum is conserved).

This ensures the phone will always land on a small, impact-absorbing pad at one end and thus avoid being damaged.

#1436: BlastBoxes

If an airliner turns out to be carrying a bomb, hidden in the luggage/freight hold, today’s invention is an internal arrangement designed to protect the plane and its occupants.

The baggage etc would be held in containers as usual, but these would be located on heavily reinforced racks so that if a bomb detonated, the containers would be expelled rearwards from the fuselage, by the explosion itself, leaving the plane free to continue.

Each container would have its own parachute to allow later collection of the luggage etc and also any forensic evidence.

#1435: Segmentimer

I began thinking about how much time each of the segments in a 7-seg digital clock display spent being illuminated.

The image shows the distribution I calculated (with red more frequently ‘on’ than orange, and the central colon omitted).

Today’s invention is to make such clocks with more robust segments corresponding to the red patches etc, in order that product lifetime is maximised. This might apply more to the mechanical flipover devices that can be found in eg airports and train stations.

Extending this thinking to digital calculators, if financial data obey Benford’s law then maybe the longterm distribution of segment activity for a business’ calculator (clearly different from the clock example above) could be recorded in order to indicate, in an instant, whether eg a company’s financial transactions were fraudulent or not.