Category: Possible inventions

I’ve done a lot of work on face recognition -especially how to get machines to do what people do effortlessly. This led to projects involving facial disguise techniques for witnesses etc.

Today’s invention attempts to employ this on behalf of people who want to exercise publicly but are embarrassed by being ungainly, unfit, under- or overweight. People who play paintball or icehockey or who do scuba diving or urban cycling already use masks, so let’s extend that concept a little.

Almost everyone would be much more willing to turn up at a gym, or pound the pavement, if they could do so anonymously (as Maurice Bowra said when caught swimming naked: “I don’t know about you, gentlemen, but in Oxford I, at least, am known by my face.”)

The invention is therefore an exercise facemask. There would be one standard size for males and one for females. Both would be made in a wirebrushed, translucent plastic, with eyeholes. This would avoid any uncanny-valley effect, but blur details and features by diffraction so as to make identification impossible.

Other features would include:
–An integrated, ventilated hood, to hold and hide one’s hair
–A few, small foam pads to space the mask off the surface of one’s face
–A small battery-powered fan, to minimise thermal discomfort during exercise
–Earphones to allow music to be listened to
–Pollen filters

This would also allow celebrities to work-out in privacy and once adopted by them, become generally acceptable gym-wear.

People looking through shop windows at items for sale frequently want to get a better view of the product in question.

Today’s invention is a transparent touch screen, attached to a shop window, which allows a window shopper to indicate, using the by-now familiar gestures, which product they would like to see and then to bring it closer, spin it around etc.

Small products such as watches etc could be mounted on a standard motorised base unit for a couple of pounds each. This would allow them to be manipulated remotely through the glass.

When not being actively viewed, the motorised display stands could randomly bring an item up to the glass and slowly turn it (in coordination with directable spotlights in the window) so as to draw people’s attention.

You’ve probably seen those movies in which some elite, special forces SWAT team attempts to aim their weapons at unshaven, bad-guy hostage takers by the use of a laser pointer which illuminates the target in the form of a red dot.

Today’s invention is intended to make that process more effective, without increasing bloodshed.

Each normal laser pointer would be modified to generate a cluster of such laser points on the targeted person’s chest. These would be made to move a little, independent of each other, using an array of small mirrors in the pointer housing.

The target would thus be persuaded to believe that many armed security personnel had drawn a bead on him. This would be useless, however, if the target couldn’t see the dots appear on his standard issue dirty vest.

The system would therefore have a mirror mounted around the pointer and which could be flicked from its stowed position, in the plane of the weapon, through 90 degrees to face the person in the sights.

This would allow them to see the array of target points on themselves and lose the will to resist.

Some very fancy high-speed vehicles have gullwing type doors.

In the event that one of these has an accident in which they overturn, today’s invention has the capacity to limit the damage to the occupants.

As such a vehicle begins to flip, the opposite door is explosively opened to provide a way to gradually absorb the energy of what would otherwise be a roof-on-tarmac impact.

The door could be engineered so that it acted like a very responsive spring system, limiting the rotational acceleration to less than that which would cause injuries.

A further system refinement might allow a robust door to flip the vehicle back onto its wheels.

Space vehicles returning to Earth’s atmosphere can perform a skip re-entry (although it has never been undertaken with a manned craft).

In future, I imagine the trend towards UAVs will extend to space drones (USVs?).

Today’s invention is for any such vehicles whose contents can tolerate thermal cycling more than rapid deceleration.

A drone would be made in a cylindrical shape and fitted with peripheral rockets. On initial re-entry, these would fire, back-spinning the cylinder about its axis and causing it to skip off the atmosphere in a highly controlled way (just as Barnes Wallis’s bouncing bombs did in the Ruhr valley).

Using this technique, a very large number of bounces could be made, so that a comparatively gentle re-entry and highly accurate splashdown could be achieved.

Industrial processes create all sorts of bulk liquids which then need to be transported via rail. Many of these will be mixtures -which cost a great deal to create or maintain.

Today’s invention is a novel way to transport liquids so that they become or stay mixed in transit.