#2916: Mechanismatch

I’m a huge fan of both Lego and Meccano, for use in demonstrating engineering mechanisms to clients (as well as understanding complex mechanisms myself).

Meccano is based on the Imperial system and therefore the two are incompatible (I’m 100% metric by choice and now use only Eitech components).

Today’s invention is a bridging piece which allows me to connect Lego to Eitech consistently. I tried buying such parts, but these days it’s just easier to 3D print them.

The grey bits are Lego, the blue bits Eitech (metal) and the yellow is the piece in question.

(If I find I need a stronger connection, I have ways to achieve that, but it usually means I’m trying to build an actual system, not a demo/prototype 😉

#2915: Crowdirection

(Pedestrians) choose paths that allow them to more directly face their endpoint as they start the route, even if a path that began by heading more to the left or right might actually end up being shorter.

Today’s invention is a way, based on this MIT research, to set up natural pedestrian flows within a city, so that an effective one-way system emerges -without street signage or policing.

If a pedestrian at A can see some kind of beacon above point B -a building he wants to reach, he will choose a route that most closely looks like it’s going there. Later on, the route deflects as shown, but the pedestrian persists and gets to the desired destination. The situation is similar for the person at B trying to get to A.

This would lessen the tendency for collisions between pedestrians in crowds and thus smooth and speed the transits of many individuals.

This natural, vector-based navigation behaviour could be exploited in numerous crowd safety applications.

#2914: SeatTuning

It strikes me as crazy that you can spend £400,000 on a car these days and still find the seats uncomfortable.

Today’s invention is to provide people with this kind of spending power with a seat containing a flexible membrane and a matrix of automatically controlled springs and dampers (each affecting an area of say 4cm^2). (You can buy anti-vibration pads, but these are way too crude to deal with long distance discomfort).

Such a system would add to the overall ride comfort over poor road surfaces, but would also provide support and softness dependent on the weight and pressure distribution of the rich person’s posterior (and back).

This could be made so that, on long journeys, the shape and pressure distribution could be subtly and automatically altered, so that passengers avoided any tendency to develop sore spots, blood clotting, numbness etc.

A control program could be included that allowed the seat to maintain a passenger’s eyes at a fixed height from the road, so that any car sickness could be lessened.

A driver’s version could be engineered to do much more than the currently available hugging bolsters. It might even give extra driving feedback about the condition of the road, steering and suspension, via the driver’s rear, during ‘spirited’ driving.

#2913: LandscapeSnakes

My youth was bedevilled by boardgames. They really don’t interest me, partly because everything is made of flat, scrappy cardboard.

Today’s invention is an upgrade to the popular game of snakes and ladders.

Instead of a flat board, each of the 144 squares would be made from a tower of a variable number of Lego-like bricks, so that the topography of the board would be configurable from game to game.

Onto this a number of plastic snakes and ladders could be snapped…their locations chosen by the players before the game commenced.

#2912: PortPotential

The efficiency of modern container ports is staggering. Containers are located on ships according to ship stability, safety concerns, final destination etc.

It has occurred to me that the order of storing containers could be further optimised by minimising the height to which any given container must be lifted to get it off a ship.

If all containers weighed the same, this wouldn’t matter, but if we have heavy ones located near the keel, they are more energetically expensive to lift than lighter ones. Given the numbers of crane movements, the potential cost saving is significant.

So today’s invention is a loading pattern which would keep heavy containers high enough to limit energy wastage during unloading, but not so high as to compromise ship stability. Ideally, I’d like to lift a given container only just high enough for it to vertically clear its neighbours towards the dockside -which has implications both for the loading pattern as well as the crane operation.

#2911: SnowShedder

During recent snowy weather, I watched numerous big trucks, which were otherwise well cleaned and maintained, shedding tonnes of snow and ice onto the roadway.

This often happened suddenly, some miles from the place where the snow had fallen overnight. The effect was that many car drivers were surprised by a sudden avalanche and their drivers reacted by hard braking or swerving.

Today’s invention is a way to ensure that all snow removal happens safely and conveniently, away from other vehicles.

It takes the form of a tarpaulin roll, the same width as the vehicle. A truck driver who arrives after a snowy period reels the tarpaulin along the roof (using a hand or motorised crank). This throws all the snow and ice off the truck, either forwards or backwards.

#2910: Econovoy

If you are travelling around the world in a convoy of different vehicles, the order and spacing in which they drive along will have a significant effect on fuel economy.

Today’s invention is a program which calculates the drag on a convoy of any combination of common vehicles.

You would enter eg ‘Three Ford transits, a Mini, two Volvo FH16s and a BMW R 1250 GSA’. The program would then spit out the best order and recommended spacings.

#2909: CheckCar’d

I’ve just read the Formula 1 technical rulebook for cars.

Personally, I think they should just set a financial limit for each team and then stand well back. The lawyers have destroyed much of the glamour in racing with their technically-ignorant nitpicking.

Today’s invention is simply to apply the now common rental car body scanning technology to race cars.

Each vehicle could be prepared, rapidly scanned and its dimensions automatically compared to the regulations. Cars which failed to meet spec would be required to be changed.

This would save an enormous amount of engineer time and lessen the chances of a nasty post-race challenge.

#2908: WarWare

When military equipment is captured, an enemy can get access to information about those weapons systems that renders them more vulnerable to attack.

This is true of both hardware and software.

Today’s invention is a program which, when a weapon is about to be captured, allows a crew member to wipe all of the software on board and replace it with an obscured, misleading, booby-trapped and/or out of date version.

This would be synchronised with some self-destruct charges that are designed to be only partially effective, so that the overrun weapon’s systems will still be accessible for interrogation and re-engineering.

A version could be developed which, when connected to an interrogator’s network, undertook a counterattack by viruses etc.

#2907: BoVine

When I travel, I sometimes use tear-open milk tubes.

Today’s invention is just a cute new way to market these, by forming an array of four such packets as if they were a cow’s udder.

This might amuse buyers, provide the manufacturer with an additional intangible asset and create an opportunity for higher value per sale.