Category: Possible inventions

Today’s invention is for athletes who want to train under conditions of hyperoxia or for eg mountaineers who need all the help they can get with breathing during an ascent.

It consists of two tubes. One passes pressurised fresh air (or pure oxygen) into the nose and the other actively extracts exhaled air from the lungs via the mouth.

As the athlete begins to breathe in, a sensor activates a small pump which helps suck in extra fresh air and then pass it through two duck-bill valves to the lungs. When an exhalation is sensed, another pump helps suck exhalation out of the lungs.

The sequence of valve and pump operations is shown as 1,2,3,4.

(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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Today’s invention is a monorail train which makes use of existing track.

This would have rollers, to fit either side of the rail and probably be gyro-stabilised (it worked in 1909, so the technology is proven).

This would provide for vehicles with much lower drag (being somewhere around half as wide as conventional trains, based on the wagon designs of prehistory).

The main benefit would be that it effectively doubles the amount of track available.

Since trains can be increased in length, with only a small penalty when loading at platforms of current size, this offers both a huge increase in the capacity of a rail network as well as allowing the vehicles to move more rapidly and provide passengers with a less restricted view.

Points switching would need to be timed, so that two trains could avoid a simultaneous change in direction which was not required.

NASA take astronaut comfort pretty seriously, since an annoying facial itch during a spacewalk could seriously degrade concentration and thus safety.

They have been looking for an improvement on the current technology which astronauts use to scratch their faces inside their helmets. This consists of a pad covered in velcro that they can brush their face against.

Today’s invention is an adaptation of the magnetic window cleaners used in high buildings.

It would have a ptfe coating on both inside and outside magnets (beige) so as not to scratch the visor. There would be a parked position which would allow the magnets to be clipped during eg takeoff. The prong used to contact the face could have several different heads, each with a different texture and springiness. These could be selected simply by rotating the exterior magnet.

Such a system might be adapted for regional itches elsewhere under the suit itself.

Modern tanks tend to have main gun barrels which are coated in thermal lagging.

This material is intended to protect the weapon from small differences in temperature (as might be caused by being parked under a desert sun). The resulting barrel deflection can cause serious inaccuracy when the gun is fired.

Today’s invention offers a way to attack such a tank so as to disable the thermal lagging, and render the machine largely useless, but without harming the crew.

A low velocity shell, containing a thermite core (of the type used in hand grenades or incendiaries) and a large number of eg ball bearings, would be fired at the front of the turret.

As a means of tank destruction, this would be completely futile, but the shrapnel would shred the thermal lagging and the thermite would then damage the exposed gun barrel, by intense, local heating.

Camouflaging stationary tanks and equipment is difficult, especially when you have to rely on scrim netting. This is horribly subject to snagging when dragged over the protrusions on a vehicle or a field gun.

Today’s invention is a simpler solution comprising an auxetic sheet material which changes, when stretched, from a smooth, flat sheet, to a self-supporting, 3D mesh structure.

This can be easily flattened, rolled up and stowed like a tarpaulin when the vehicle is deployed.

If you need to hide, the sheet can be dragged to a highpoint and then pulled down in several directions.

The sheet expands and covers whatever is necessary, obscuring it from view, but enabling a tank crew beneath still to make observations and target weapons.

When a rapid movement is ordered, the sheet can be released and walked inward to the high point. The continuous sheet is easy to then roll up without nearly so many snags and helped by the elastic spring-back of these materials.