Category: Possible inventions

I’ve seen a number of articles about how dangerous sports like baseball are -especially for youngsters. Apparently batters get hit on the body and head frequently.

Obviously, helmets and body armour are a good idea, but they are restrictive when you are trying to perfect technique -so today’s invention offers an additional/alternative layer of safety for trainee players.

There are some very high-accuracy ball tracking systems around.

I suggest using one of these eg at a training school to detect ball motion toward the helmet of a batter (or batsman).

If a potential collision were detected, it would be reasonably straightforward to fire a spring-loaded plate up off the ground to shield the player from the impact.

Car tyres are made fat so as to provide grip…but that also entails a big downside: rolling resistance.

Today’s invention enables road-going vehicles to minimise their rolling resistance and thus save significantly on fuel.

Each of the wheels would have a tyre fitted with a super-resilient inner edge (this ring might even be replaceable, separately from the main tyre itself).

When travelling at a uniform speed, the wheel would rotate inwards at the top slightly so that only the inner edge was in contact with the road: a) (and possibly also disconnecting the drive to that wheel).

When any acceleration, deceleration or cornering was required, the wheel would take up a vertical position, providing the required grip: b).

Concorde was one of the first planes to be able to automatically shift fuel around the plane to maintain stability in flight.

Today’s invention is a fuel transport system for fighter planes which has the opposite intention.

When under attack, fuel could be rapidly pumped from one wing to another. This would enable eg incendiary bullets to pass through without causing a fire, but also it would create sharp, lateral jinking motions in flight -to help avoid being hit by a pursuing missile.

Every time it rains, as cars drive past me I get splashed by the bow-wave they create when I’m standing waiting to cross the road.

Today’s invention is biodegradable coloured particles (probably made in the form of cork discs).

Kind hearted people would throw a few dozen of these into any nasty kerbside puddles they saw.

When a car passes, it blasts water and particles onto the pavement. The water washes away but the particles remain.

Subsequent pedestrians can see the area affected by previous car splashes and avoid standing within the affected area.

Today’s invention represents another go at solving the bird-strike problem for passenger aircraft.

Each airliner would be equipped with a small UAV, capable of flying at speeds marginally greater than cruising velocity at medium and low altitudes. This craft could be highly streamlined, impact resistant and able to refuel itself periodically from the main aircraft.

The UAV would be released in flight and controlled by the aircraft’s steering system so as to fly directly ahead of it in areas with a moderate to high birdstrike probability.

A sufficient distance would be maintained between drone and aircraft so that any UAV malfunction could not damage the main plane.

The UAV would carry optical and perhaps acoustic sensors, in order to detect in advance the arrival of any errant avians. The two would fly close enough so that if the scout vehicle was actually hit (eg from the left), the aircraft crew would still have enough time to respond to advice to bear sharply right.

It might even be necessary to allow the drone to detonate its own small fuel load if it sensed that the flock was too big to be steered around.

Today’s invention is a novel version of the humble brick.

This takes the form of a fired ceramic component with the geometry shown. It can be used in the normal way, enabling double-thickness walls to be constructed with integral, and therefore stronger, cross-ties between them.

This design uses less mortar, spreads stresses more evenly and, in the event that a single brick is actually needed, can be cut to size, as usual.

Learning to rollerskate was a pain: literally. Making a tailbone landing on concrete always limited my childhood enjoyment of the activity.

Today’s invention is therefore skates (or skateboards) with brakes.

Inside each wheel would be a small drum brake powered by a spring which would be wound up by a learner skater’s normal forward movement. The brakes would be fitted with a wireless receiver.

The user’s mobile phone would then allow these brakes to be actuated by releasing the springs progressively, in response to a particular key press.

This would allow discreet control of the deceleration, hiding one’s Learner status (and also potentially giving even expert skaters an extra ‘handbrake turn’ facility).

Everyone who spends their day sitting in front of a screen could benefit from some extra exertion.

Today’s invention is a large-scale keyboard that sits on the floor and allows someone to type, say a document, by stepping from key to key.

Obviously, it would be very frustrating for accomplished typists, but for we hunt-and-peckers, it would be little slower than normal typing speed -whilst providing additional exercise and circulatory benefits from time to time.

Installing one of these near the normal office cubicles could also introduce an extra games element to the process of in-work exercise.

Today’s invention is a haptic interface…a system which allows someone to apparently touch a 3-D designed object.

The design is done and its geometry sent to the device. The operator puts his hand in the system’s box, whilst viewing a (stereo) display of the object. Cameras in the box, track small marks on the operator’s fingers. This creates a display of the operator’s hand on the screen, together with that of the design object itself.

As the operator’s fingers move into positions where they would be about to collide with the object, if it were actually in the box, so a robot hand with cameras attached, follows the real fingers and provides the sensation of a solid object -by opposing the motion of the real fingers.

In this way, the operator sees a lifelike hand and feels coordinated fingertip contact with an apparently solid design.

Today’s invention is another aerial vehicle (plan view on the right).

It consists of two horizontal drive shafts on each of which are placed a set of rotors (red).

At the rotors turn, their blade pitch is altered (perhaps by a cam on the shaft) so that as they descend on the outer side of the craft, they force air down and provide lift.

On the inner, upward part of their rotation, the blades are feathered so as to cause comparatively little vertical drag (their flat, front-facing blades are shielded from axial drag by being hidden within the body of the vehicle).

Each rotor could be made with numerous blades and each could be rotationally offset from its neighbour causing waves of lift.