Category: Possible inventions

Inkjet printers are remarkable devices, capable of laying down inks with extreme precision.

Today’s invention is to apply this to the creation of adhesive labels.

Imagine a printer which is creating a page of eg address labels. On the opposite side from the text, an extra print head sprays adhesive onto the paper.

The spray could generate a pattern which used just enough glue to effectively attach the labels. It could be made coloured, so that the sticky areas could be avoided when handling the paper.

(This would also allow envelopes to be made from a flat sheet of paper and then folded so that the pre-glued edges stuck together. Or, apply the glue to a roll of paper to make masking tape).

Defenders in football have to keep a close eye on the foot movements of attacking players. When attempting to tackle a deft centre-forward, they need to anticipate where the ball is going to go in the next few milliseconds.

Today’s invention is intended to make the job of such players, especially at the highest level, even more challenging.

The studs on boots would each be fitted with a small LED. These could be made to switch on and off in patterns -so as to create extra, subtle shadows and suggest movement in a direction opposite to that in which the player’s weight is actually shifting.

The patterns could be made to vary, perhaps randomly, so that predicting the next body-swerve would be harder (and resulting in more goals).

High-board diving is a fascinating sport, although watching it without slow-motion playback is pretty pointless.

Today’s invention seeks to extend the challenge and appeal of this sport.

A springy diving board would be capable of being mechanically depressed and then released, in order to propel the diver upwards before the diving descent.

This would allow much more time in the air for gymnastic performance.

The board could be finely controlled by a remote control device in the hand of the diver (which could be dropped after launch).

The board would also automatically withdraw from the side of the pool, once the diver was airborne, in order to avoid collisions on the way down.

Surfing is tough to learn. Today’s invention is a surfboard which tries to make the whole balancing on a floating board thing a little easier.

In calm water, a training surfboard could be fitted with a pressure pad on the upper surface and a small directable drive unit on the underside (with shielded propeller).

The pressure pad could detect pressure asymmetry on the board and direct the propeller to steer towards the higher pressure side.

This would be controlled by the kind of neural network which can be reliably trained to help with pole balancing in realtime.

One of the big issues about building a new, high-speed rail network is that compulsory purchase of the land required is electorally unpopular.

Today’s invention is therefore to build a railway within the central reservation of existing motorways.

The ground underneath has already been prepared for heavy road traffic and could easily support a light, ultra-fast railway.

Flyover supports and bridge columns would need to be repositioned but this could be done by inserting a standard sized pipe unit beneath these, big enough to accommodate two of the trains passing side by side.

I was inspired to create today’s invention by reading this story in New Scientist.

Imagine if a sportsground had microphones arrayed around the playing area. These detect the volume of sound from different sections of the crowd.

It would then be possible to

a) Replay on big screens automatically parts of the action which had just caused a crescendo

b) Extract those parts of the action which had excited the home end more than the away end and play those bits to the home fans watching on mobile devices

c) Compare the crowd’s integrated excitement level from game to game.

Supermarkets are keen to offer ‘loyalty’ programmes to their customers. Today’s invention is an additional scheme.

Customers wanting to be involved in the programme would be issued with a recycled mobile phone with a housing to attach it to their windscreen, facing out.

A section of the carpark near the front door would be reserved for those customers who had spent the most on their last visit (or series of visits).

Customers in search of a parking space (within a day’s walk of the shop) would cruise past this premium area. If eligible to park there, the phones on either side of a gap would suddenly flash their screens.

These privileged drivers could also request by text that their cars be filled with fuel, water etc whilst in the shop, via a mobile service station vehicle.

A more refined version of this idea might allocate spaces within the special section according to the spend history of individual drivers, so that really big spenders would end up right outside the entrance.

Anyone parking there without having been signalled to do so would be clamped.

Today’s invention is a double-whammy for those of us who have to do supermarket shopping.

1. The checkout system knows the identity of every item on the conveyor belt. This allows it to order these items for packing so that the most fragile* ones are always at the top of the shopping bags (a domestic error of gargantuan proportions is apparently to put the milk on top of the bread).

This ordering might be achieved by holding several bags open at once. A deliver chute would fire each item at a bag which was not yet full and whose last added item was less fragile than the current one in the chute.

Some bags would of course remain forever part-full -if eggs were added to a bag with a jar of pickles, for example.

2. To limit that problem and to save on the number of plastic bags used, these would appear as a cylinder on a roll. When a bag has something very fragile added, it is sealed with a seam across the top, so that bags may contain different volumes.

(*Every item in the supermarket could be pre-rated in terms of its vulnerability to damage by a panel of hyper-careful shoppers, so that product fragility would end up in inverse proportion to depth within a given bag).