Category: Possible inventions

It seems that babies stroked at a speed of 2.5cm per second, stop crying and calm down.

What’s so special about 2.5 centimeters a second? That’s the speed at which our primate cousins groom one another. These neurons have been around far far longer than we have. They’re waiting for that signal that says somebody else is looking out for you, that they care.

So today’s invention is a robotic cot base, suitably upholstered, but along which small vibratory ripples would be made to pass at 2.5cm per second.

This would be felt by a baby lying in any orientation and help it to sleep.

Today’s invention is an application of swapping reels of 3-D printing material automatically, so that the resulting print can consist of different colours.

These colours would be dictated by the Finite Element stress model of the structure in question.

Areas of predicted high stress could be coloured eg red, so that such areas would be more readily inspected for signs of wear or fatigue in use.

The Millennium footbridge in London gave engineers pause for thought when it was found to have a natural frequency close to that of human walking. This caused the bridge to move in response to people’s steps, which, in turn, caused people to synchronise their gaits, exacerbating the problem.

Big dampers have since been affixed at significant cost.

In order to allow architects to do their usual pushing the envelope, today’s invention aims to reduce the sensitivity of narrow bridges to the energy inputs from feet.

A version of this type of energy absorbing surface could be developed that extracted a larger fraction of energy from walking (using heavier, small-scale dampers). This would reduce the energy available for unfortunate bridge vibration (and slow walking speeds too).

Areas of the surface which made bigger contributions to bridge movement could be identified and programmed to have stiffer dampers.

I was reading today about tardigrades which survive long periods in a dessicated, apparently lifeless, state (tun). When exposed to water they revive.

Today’s invention is to use tardigrades in the tun state as a desiccant. They can be found in any patch of soil, apparently.

When shaken over the guts of eg electronics devices which have been accidentally made wet, they would absorb water, revive and then naturally make their way to a patch of damp moss in an adjacent petri dish.

I’ve been watching documentaries about people trying to break the land speed record for bicycles. There is an event where they can slipstream a powered vehicle.

The airflow (blue) passes around a vertical plate (green) on a vehicle and vortices then swirl around the back of the rider.

This greatly lessens the effort required.

Today’s invention is a large back shield (red) which acts as a sail which is intermittently hit by the vortices and thus provides even greater forward thrust on the rider.

This would work best when attached firmly to the bike itself.

Today’s invention is an electric vehicle which is used on runways to push the undercarriage of a plane almost to the point of take off.

This reduces the fuel used by the engines, so that a plane can stay aloft for longer.

It may also stress the airframe less and reduce take off noise.

The vehicle might be controlled by the flightcrew direct from the cockpit.

In former times, people piled into lifts randomly. We can’t afford that any more, partly for health reasons, partly because lifts get significantly delayed as passengers fight their way to the front on leaving.

Today’s invention is an elevator floor on which appear illuminated regions, as shown.

When the lift approaches a floor where people are waiting, it can tell if there are any spaces available. If there are, it will stop. As it does, the lift will ‘listen’ for each button press by entrants and direct people to stand in a circle with the number of their floor marked in it.

People who are about to leave at the next few floors will be shuffled forward to new circles.

This will not only maintain some social distancing, but also speed up the loading and unloading processes, by reducing the amount of barging and colliding.

When the lift has filled itself to the allowed capacity, and spaced the occupants out appropriately, the doors will close.

Today’s invention is an alternative to burial at sea for personnel on an aircraft carrier.

The body of a sailor who had passed away would be placed, with due ceremony, in a titanium wire basket attached to the rear of a jet plane.

The plane’s jet exhaust would perform very effective cremation in flight, which might well appeal to many service personnel.

When airliners land, they can shed up to 7lb of rubber each time. It’s the rubbing on the ground during braking that causes this.

There is thus a need to use special equipment to scrub runways every few days.

Today’s invention is to fit each airliner with a set of wire brushes behind the wheels.

As each wheel grips the tarmac, it drives a rotary wire brush placed behind it and which is in contact with the ground. This disrupts the layer of rubber which would otherwise form.

It would also be possible to use the landing speed airflow to direct the rubber particles into a lightweight filter attached to the undercarriage.

This could be replaced for every flight.