Category: Possible inventions

Today’s invention is designed for those people who use wheelchairs but who want the freedom which cycling allows.

To enable them to enjoy some quiet transport, a small electric vehicle is attached to the rear of the bike frame.

This attempts to accelerate gradually to attain a user-defined maximum speed, irrespective of the road gradient, but with the ability to slow rapidly in response to use of the conventional brakes (by responding to the usual mechanical movement of the rear brake cable).

A user would sit on the bike saddle, strapping one or two feet to the pedals for safety.

The electric vehicle would have wheels set wide enough apart that the bike could not tip over.

Today’s invention is to use nuclear-powered submarines to better effect than global destruction.

Given the enormous amount of power output from the motor of such a vessel (~80MW) it should be possible to bolt on a refrigeration unit and generate about a tonne of ice every 5 seconds, whilst moored (The unit would need to be at the far end of the vessel from the normal heat exchangers, whilst rejecting its own heat through them as well).

This would quickly become a pretty substantial floe, which could be used tactically to disrupt shipping lanes and thus support economic sanctions -a big improvement over firing missiles and one which would be hard to attribute to any one nation’s military.

People tend to eat somewhat less if they have access to high calorie foods in big, opaque packages. The story is that they learn to exercise some portion control when presented with a large volume of goodies.

Today’s invention is therefore a vending machine for snack food eg crisps or nuts, designed to help people limit their intake.

This has pictures of the glorious calorie-dense snacks, but when you select and pay for a portion, a larger amount of say nuts drops into a tray.

Still invisible, you can insert your hand into a glove (like a clean-room cabinet) and scoop what you want, by touch, into a bag.

The idea is that getting in touch with the product, in the same way as when you use a big packet, allows development of some portion control.

You select less than the amount the machine allows as a portion, because you have the experience of grabbing it and scraping it into eg a paper cup.

The surplus is replaced in the storage hopper for that particular snackfood.

Today’s invention is a modification to a Newtonian telescope for novice astronomers.

A low-density photochromic sheet (blue) is placed over the aperture.

Inside, a smartphone (pink) is located behind the mirror. This device ‘knows’ both the position and orientation of the telescope (and the time).

If the scope starts to be pointed at eg the sun, the smartphone screen illuminates the photochromic sheet and dims the output image before it can blind the user.

Similarly, if the moon is being observed, the phone will perform the function of an automated moon filter.

In motorsport, painted-on sponsor adverts are so 20th-Century.

Today’s invention is display screens mounted flush to the body of a racing car.

These could be updated electronically as a race progresses.

The space on the cars could be auctioned in realtime, so that those near the front, especially when nearing the chequered flag. could command much higher rates than the tail-enders.

Today’s invention is a set of rotorblades on a massive helicopter which would be powered by a UAV docked on the end of each.

This would allow the fuselage space normally occupied by engines to be filled with freight or people (a smaller motor would be needed to drive the tail rotor).

The number of drones might be variable, dependent upon the load to be transported so that a set of say six, 10m carbon-fibre blades could be driven by a balanced set of up to six small aircraft.

When recently listening to a radio broadcast with poor sound quality, I was struck by how much more intelligible the female reporters’ voices were than those of the males (whose low tones so muddied their words that they became a mumble).

In science class, we learned that speaking with a larynx full of helium caused our voices to rise in pitch.

Today’s invention is for male aircrew who wear oxygen masks and need to communicate very clearly.

It consists of a small cylinder of Helium or other low density gas, a tiny squirt of which is injected into the mask when its wearer begins to speak.

This raises the pitch of the speech which is transmitted, making it less garbled.

Today’s invention is a flying pallet which can be used by transport helicopters to move freight.

Such a system could help maintain an underslung load in a stable orientation.

Its main benefit however is that a wing of this kind will generate substantial extra lift when the helicopter is travelling forwards -as long as it’s far enough below the source of the downwash (and trimmed to the right angle of attack by altering the lengths of the suspension framework).

Although this is no help hoisting eg a shipping container off the ground, once in motion the wing could be made light and strong enough to reduce the loading on the main rotor, especially over long distances.

Lots of warehouse-type stores employ sliding doors, partly in an attempt to avoid heating up the outside atmosphere.

These sense the arrival of people (via simple movement detection) and then open completely to admit them -with the effect that a large amount of heat is transferred too.

Today’s invention is a set of sliding doors which can find the overall shape of arriving customers (including those pushing a trolley with a door slung across the top) using simple image processing.

The doors move so that the seam between them is located at the centre of the approaching objects.

The doors then open only widely enough to comfortably clear the edges of those entering (or exiting).

This could cut heat loss via these big doors by 50%.