Category: Possible inventions

Motorcycle theft is a huge problem, especially in cities like London where the Police can’t pursue thieves since that would pose a danger to the public.

Many crimes occur when a thief uses a cordless angle grinder to cut off the lock from the brake disc on a motorcycle, so chaining your bike to a lamppost is just not secure.

We are always being told about how we must welcome autonomous vehicles. Not me, but today’s invention employs them on behalf of bikers.

A rider arrives in a city and makes a call. Within a few minutes an armoured, autonomous truck arrives and a slot opens in the side. The rider’s machine is rolled inside, the slot locked and the truck drives away.

The truck then circulates slowly until it receives a call to drop off or collect another bike. There is no way to hijack this machine without a main battle tank.

All the calls are encrypted, so that thieves can’t just call up a truck and ride off on somebody else’s bike.

A different drop off point is arranged by phone and the truck will require biometric verification of the receiver. It will also film the scene to ensure that he/she can get away unmolested. These trucks might also offer a safe place for a biker under threat, as well as supplies of emergency fuel.

Light switches tend to be bistable devices, equally at home in either the on or off position.

Certain people, especially in my experience teenagers, tend to be unaware that they have left roomlights perpetually on.

Today’s invention is a reminder to switch off the lights but which also includes a couple of supportive ‘nudges.’

A lever is attached, using a sticky pad, to a switch, so as to make it physically more difficult to activate the lights than to deactivate them.

Deactivation is actively encouraged by providing a small, glow-in-the-dark hand which a departing teenager is marginally more likely to high-five.

In these troubled times, it’s sometimes necessary to put in place roadblocks to arrest the progress of suspected criminals.

It’s hard for police to get to the right place to intercept them, without risking their own lives and those of bystanders.

Today’s invention is street lamps which can be lowered, by wireless signal, using a hinge at their base. They could thus block a road and act as a reinforced barrier to speeding vehicles.

Once lowered, the lamps themselves could be made to flash on and off to draw attention to the local road closure (right hand diagram).

Lamps might also interlock across the road for added impact strength.

Offroad vehicles like ATVs and trailbikes use knobbly tyres to provide grip on uneven surfaces.

The downside of this is that, when these tyres hit tarmac, they have a dangerous tendency to suddenly adhere to the surface and flip the vehicle over unpredictably (more than 300 people died in on-road ATV accidents in 2011).

Today’s invention is a set of clip-on rubber covers for knobbly tyres (shown here in translucent red). These have smooth exterior and an interior surface that loosely fits the pattern of knobs, so that they stay in place when the driver/rider encounters tarmac and thus they allow short, slow journeys to be made in safety.

This has the additional benefit of improved fuel economy when being driven on-road.

OK, I seems to be developing a dentist obsession. I have spent a lot of time in my local tooth emporium being force-fed Radio 2. It is god-awful, chatty pap. Certainly not anything that would relax me pre-surgery.

Today’s invention is simply a way for everyone to enjoy their treatment a little more.

When I make an appointment, the system currently emails or texts me a reminder. In future, I could reply to confirm and provide login details to my Spotify account, even specifying a playlist, if I fancied that.

On I walking into the treatment room, a dental nurse accesses my records (stored online) and with them my music, which plays automatically.

Now that we have the internet, today’s invention is a way to use books for more than mere information.

Imagine a room with several bookcases against the outside walls. Given the cost of heating and the implication for environmental ecopocalypse, books would be printed on insulative paper which also has holes cut randomly into the margins of every page (shown in red).

These would hold pockets of stationary air and provide the room with greatly increased thermal insulation.

When you are driving in dark, foggy conditions, conventional foglamps don’t seem to help much.

Today’s invention is a new operating regime for car lights in heavy fog or dark, misty conditions.

Using your high beams only lights up the roadsigns too brightly, as well as the mist itself and this can be quite disorientating. Just using the sidelights allows you to see further ahead in fog, but the roadsigns and markings are then less visible.

I’ve noticed that simply flicking between full beam and side lights, at a frequency of about 2Hz, illuminates both the road ahead and the roadsigns really effectively.

Cars would be equipped with a ‘dark+fog’ lighting regime in which this flicking would be performed automatically. It might be effective to have this frequency increase with vehicle speed (although keeping well below flicker fusion frequency.

Windscreens are vulnerable to flying rocks. When a bad break occurs, it’s not safe to drive with restricted vision, so you may choose to punch out the remaining glass.

Nobody likes having lumps of safety glass blowing into their face though, so it usually means a two-hour wait by the roadside, until the Expensive-Screens-R-Us van appears.

Today’s invention is a sunroof window which can be popped out and used instead of a holed windscreen.

This would be made bigger than the windscreen itself, so that it could be quickly clamped in place over the windscreen aperture and enable a quick, safe ride home (or to your friendly local garage).

For people who live in rainy countries, there might be a two-layer sunroof option. One could be extracted to replace the windscreen, whilst the other keeps your head dry.