Category: Possible inventions

Rolling roads are routinely used in training and assessing racing cyclists.

Today’s invention extends this to the races themselves.

Rather than spend insane amounts on a velodrome, a larger-than-usual-scale rolling road could be made wide enough to accommodate several machines in parallel -and cost relatively little.

This would need to have a cushioned surround area in case someone made an error and fell off.

Systems such as this could installed all over the country allowing regional competitions without the need to travel to the capital all the time.

As shown, the road could even be mounted on a base using hydraulic actuators to simulate the effects of hills/banking etc.

Organic dust is explosive -everything from sawdust to coal to flour has the potential to form a cloud of particles and, at the right concentration, blow up.

This seems to be also true of nanoparticles (making nanoparticles consistently is very demanding, but even micron-sized mists exhibit this property to some extent).

Today’s invention is therefore a simplified way to introduce fuel into an internal combustion engine.

A rod of organic material is advanced by a geared micrometer and abraded each time the piston moves upwards across its surface. This creates a gas of particles which are mixed with the incoming airstream.

The subsequent compression of this mixture raises its temperature enough to cause it to explode and drive the following cycle.

The fuel rod would be very much safer to transport than liquid petroleum, since no particles would be released from its surface unless friction were applied. Varying the forward speed of the rod could control the fuel inflow precisely.

Tracer rounds are commonly used by armies who want to redirect their small arms fire more precisely at a target.

One difficulty is that, by letting off a burst of brightly-lit bullets, it’s easy for an enemy to identify their source and return fire.

Today’s invention is a bullet which has a rear-facing skirt, within which an insulated metal plug sits (red).

This would be heated by the firing process so that its flight could be followed by the shooter, using infra-red goggles, but without being visible to an enemy.

Top athletes spend time visualising their next performance. This generally has a good effect on their results.

The process seems to rely on sportsmen and women being able mentally to step through some critical elements of their play, as if they were actually competing.

Today’s invention is a (highly secure) smartphone app which allows athletes to watch a simulation of themselves during their next event. For a soccer player, this might involve eg taking shots from set pieces.

A given player would be able to rehearse the preparation, target selection, etc days before a game and repeatedly view this from slightly different angles.

An avatar, wearing his shirt and with his haircut (and tattoos) would then be seen to run to the spot and score against a goalkeeper in the opponent’s colours and with appropriate crowd noise and other sound effects.

The app would also keep a record of target points selected and suggest some randomisation, so that the player’s actions would be harder to predict from game to game.

Today’s invention is a washing line made of a glass-fibre rod (just like a uniform-diameter fishing rod).

This bistable strut would be moored securely at either end, in a slot housing which would allow motion of the rod only in the vertical plane.

The line would begin in the lower, dotted configuration.

Once loaded with washing, it would be pushed upwards into the other stable position, allowing the washing to be held high up in the faster airstream and without the usual problem of large items such as sheets potentially dragging on the ground.

The nice thing about this approach is that several such lines could be set up with slots at the same two locations but oriented in slightly off-vertical planes.

Two mooring points would thus allow several washing lines to be supported which did not greatly interfere with each other’s drying capability.

The decks of aircraft carriers are very busy and often congested places.

Today’s invention is an extra deck which sits atop the normal flight deck.

When required, it is slid out sideways, almost doubling the area available for takeoffs and landings.

If might also provide additional armour when not thus deployed -as well as potentially allowing planes to take off at right angles to the direction of motion of the vessel (as shown).

People (especially young men) can be easily fooled by cosmetics.

Today’s invention is a software tool which allows anyone to take a picture of someone they have just met and then automatically remove the visual effects of their make-up.

It’s pretty easy for software to find features within a face and then to detect areas which have heightened colouring. This would simply be replaced by a natural skin shade for the face region in question.

As ever, inner beauty will shine through.

Today’s invention is an alternative to caterpillar tracks for tanks.

One problem with tracks is that when some links are damaged (eg by landmines) the vehicle is immobilised.

Instead, each vehicle would ride on two banks of castors, one on either side.

Each castor would be loosely held so that it could spin in a small cage, which would itself be held in place inside a vertical track. The tracks themselves could slide up and down, within shafts (dark blue) providing independent suspension.

Each track would accommodate a number of cages, so that when any of the lower ones were damaged, pressure could be applied to the topmost cage to force the damaged ones out. This would allow replacement of wheels from inside the vehicle, without having to stop.

Each track would have an independent drive unit (red) which would turn the single castor it was in contact with. Castors would have sprockets to enable one to drive its neighbours.

In this way, the drive units could be kept safely within the vehicle body and failure of a small number of shafts would leave mobility unaffected (although loss of an odd number of castors from one shaft would necessitate a change in motor direction).

Horses used to pull barges along canals using tow ropes.

Today’s invention resurrects this approach in applying it to shipping.

Instead of horses, think remote-controlled anchor subs.

Ships in a fleet would do away with onboard main engines, motors, propellers and all that stuff.

Instead, they would be equipped with a number of small submersibles. Each of these would descend to the sea floor, ship-lengths ahead, trailing an anchor chain.

The subs would actively seek suitable purchase sites, attach themselves to rocks/crevices and then a set of winches on board ship would wind the chains in -driving the vessel forward.

Advantages of this method include: 1. Much less subsea noise and thus less disturbance to ocean life. 2. Potentially much higher accelerations than can be achieved using normal propellers or thrusters. 3. Greater operational flexibility via swapping subs. 4. Cheaper ships.