Category: Feasible inventions

There is now great interest in robotic systems which can help retrieve wounded soldiers from a battlefield.

Today’s invention is a hybrid animal/machine system which does not rely on machine intelligence -and might therefore work robustly.

A small terrier is equipped with a light body shield. This is attached to an armoured trolley via a lightweight cable. As the dog runs, the cable becomes slightly taught and the animal’s choice of direction is transmitted to the trolley’s motors via the bend within the cable. The dog can thus direct the trolley, running on powered tracks, but without having to pull it.

When the dog detects a wounded soldier it finds the scented tag attached to a harness with which he or she is equipped. The dog has been trained to drag the tag and drop it into an aperture on the trolley. A winch automatically pulls the soldier aboard and the dog runs back to base pursued closely by the trolley.

Today’s invention is a browser plugin which remembers what content a user has scrolled through before and, if asked to display it again, does so with the content greyed out. The more showings, the paler the content.

This would alert the user, before starting to re-read any such material, to the fact that this was old news -without having to filter and completely reformat the stories on eg the BBC website, only some of which change in the course of a day.

It would also lessen the frustration associated with coming across content repeated on different sites dressed up in alternative colours, formats and fonts.

Astronauts, especially rookies, apparently have great trouble sleeping in near-zero gravity.

They seem to miss the sensation of pressure on their bodies from a horizontal bed and covers. Strapping themselves in is a poor substitute.

Today’s invention is therefore an astronaut sleeping bag which forms a loose seal around the sleeper’s neck. The rear face of the bag is attached to a spacecraft wall surface at many locations.

The other end of the bag is connected to a small, silenced vacuum pump which sucks out the air and has the effect of holding the astronaut down onto the wall surface with a user-controlled pressure. This feels more like the experience of sleeping in his/her own, 1-g, bed at home.

I’ve described knot-tying techniques before and today’s invention is a new one. Imagine trying to tie a complex knot for the first time.

Take a long rope of snap-together beads and roll around it a sheet of moist cardboard -or pastry.

Have the complex knot tied by an expert so that the coating is included in the body of the knot (have the expert make many of these). Allow the coating to dry and stiffen, forming a knot-shaped shell. Pull on the free ends of the beaded rope so that it can be extracted.

You now have a shell which can be used to pass rope through, from one end -automatically forming a complex knot. The coating can now be stripped off, reconstituted and reused, leaving the finished knot behind.

Today’s invention is a small but robust clamp I can use to stop my seven year old daughter from reading all of her latest book at one sitting.

This would be lockable in position and also limit any attempt to read the end of the story first.

Car drivers are now beset by a large range of electronic information. GPS, radio and performance diagnostics all demand attention that might better be directed towards events on the road.

Several vehicles now have a touchscreen which provides access to all of these sources of information and entertainment…this seems like a bad idea from a road safety viewpoint. Even if mounted somewhere a driver can see it without constantly glancing down, it’s still a less than optimal solution.

Today’s invention is to equip such touchscreens with an algorithm which senses the amount of fiddling about that a user is doing. If this exceeds a certain time limit (which might decrease with the speed of the vehicle), then it would issue a warning to park -or switch off the display until velocity = zero.

Today’s invention is a robotic device which can tilt a cup of freshly-poured latte and, using a dipper, draw shapes in the microbubble milk foam on the top.

This would be a programmable device capable of producing designs chosen by customers from a jukebox like menu.

It would also be able to write short printed messages in the foam, as typed into a keypad by the barrista.

Today’s invention is a way for drivers of left-hand-drive-vehicles to overtake more safely.

A periscope is mounted across the top of the dashboard with a motor driven mirror unit protruding through the window (extendable when overtaking is anticipated.

This allows the driver to rotate the mirror unit and see what’s behind and in front using only small lateral movements of the vehicle.

The unit might obviously be reused to help drivers of right-hand-drive cars in lhd countries.

If you want to distribute aid packages from the air, dropping them in one lump can be dangerous and ineffective (the impact of packages on each other can destroy the contents and the whole lot may disappear into a single lake).

Today’s invention makes use of the lift force generated on a spinning cylinder.

Drop cylindrical packages after they have been spun up to a random speed (and direction) on board the plane (using eg a rolling road device).

As they fall, the packages experience different lateral forces, causing them to disperse over a large area.

I once made a rather ghastly simulation of particles flowing under gravity using the Java-based Agentsheets program.

Now the state of the art has moved ahead significantly.

Today’s invention is a watch which is a simulated egg-timer. The program involved would show an hourglass on-screen through which would flow simulated particles.

This could be calibrated to provide per-minute timings and would operate effectively and accurately -independent of the orientation of the watch itself.

For fun, it could be made with user-settable parameters eg particle size and ‘g’ (as well as having visible particles of ‘air’ flow upwards as the ‘sand’ flowed downwards).