Category: Possible inventions

When cutting up firewood, with nothing else to think about, it occurred to me that the process might be better organised.

People who want to saw wood slowly, using a normal ripsaw and a consistent action, but who have limited musclepower can make use of today’s invention.

It consists of a simple vise which grips wood of any shape in the usual way. After each stroke of the saw, the vise (and wood) is rotated precisely (using a computer-controlled motor), so that a perpendicular to the saw contacts the wood surface symmetrically.

This minimises the amount of wood sawn through in each stroke and thus the rate at which energy needs to be expended.

Helicopters throw up massive amounts of dust when they have to operate off unprepared surfaces. This is bad because aero engines don’t enjoy inhaling the stuff and also the pilot’s view of the landing site is obscured.

Today’s invention is a lightweight mat which is carried beneath a helicopter in a tube. When a landing is planned, the tube is lowered to the ground and motorised wheels on either end rotate the tube so that the mat rolled up inside anchors itself at one side and is extracted -forming a flat, dust free helipad.

After take-off, the drive wheels reverse, rolling the mat back into the tube which is then hoisted back up under the belly of the aircraft.

Today’s invention is a vending machine which is wheeled into an elevator car and secured there.

This allows people using the lift to make purchases whilst in transit and can be replaced with a refilled machine at the start of each new day.

Each machine would plug into the electrical services of the lift, reducing the required number of vending machines, promoting movement of people from department to department within a corporation and potentially providing greater comfort for anyone stuck inside.

Anyone whose been to the cinema knows it’s possible to create an artificial, high-precision, 3-D stereo sound field. Now imagine equipping a room with a bank of speakers which generate a sound field corresponding to that which might created by a single noisy insect moving around inside.

This acoustic point source could be made to appear to move about a room, or within a vehicle, allowing someone to follow the sound as if following a real insect.

This might be used to help direct people around a predetermined circuit. It might work as a replacement for the voice in satnav systems, for example. By simply driving towards the noise of the virtual insect (as created in realtime by the car’s sound system).

Today’s invention is an augmented reality application which allows a group of people conducting a search to collaborate more effectively (They might be scanning an area for hidden explosives or searching for evidence in connection with some crime, for example).

Each user wears a set of glasses which knows its position and orientation and projects a bright, individually coloured patch of light onto the surfaces he is looking at. Everone’s glasses also contain a camera which detects and tracks his coloured patch.

The information about those areas which have been inspected, by anyone in the group, is pooled and obscured in everyone’s field of view.

For a more thorough scrutiny, it might be arranged that each patch of space need be independently inspected by say two people before being obscured.

Today’s invention is a toothbrush head which replaces the normal top on a toothpaste tube.

Instead of squirting paste onto the head, it can now be squeezed through from behind the bristles.

When finished teethcleaning, the brush is run under a tap, washing off all surface paste (which otherwise encrusts the tube nozzle and cap).

Falling down is the second biggest cause of accidental death (after car accidents).

Today’s invention is therefore an airbag which can be located in a pod within a bannister or handrail.

Sensors in the stair treads would determine where the next footfalls should occur…if this pattern were noticeably disrupted suddenly or if there were a sufficiently hard impact on a tread-based sensor, it would automatically fire the airbag inflation mechanism.

The inflation process could be less violent than in a vehicle, so as not to upend other people in transit, but still allow cushioning, slowing and arresting of the victim’s fall.

A fall would trigger other bags lower down the staircase (especially one on the bottom landing).

Laser pointers tend to jitter all over the screen -especially in the hand of a nervous presenter.

Today’s invention is a laser pointer which allows the shaky presenter to press a button when the red dot is roughly in the right place.

Motion sensors in the pointer then lock the beam onto that location -shining the laser at that point irrespective of where the presenter’s hand is wandering (within reason).

Another button press and the pointer can be (unsteadily) moved to the next required location.

In order to minimise the possibility of an automatic weapon jamming (when someone’s life might depend on it), ammunition needs to be highly consistent.

Today’s invention is a device which fits in the intake end of a magazine. This allows rounds to be passed through it into a magazine itself. As this happens, each round is rotated about its long axis under an internal light and asymmetries detected -using the equivalent of a cellphone camera.

As the rotation occurs, each bullet is also weighed to ensure that the amount of propellent is within specification. If a problem is detected, a round would be ejected onto the floor.

Since jamming often only occurs after a bad sequence of rounds, this device might be used to randomise the bullets by weight and asymmetry in order to reduce the accumulation of dynamical errors (when using cheap ammunition) which contribute to jamming.

An upgrade to this idea would be to fit it to the lower end of a magazine with an open trough into which bullets could be dropped a handful at a time. This would to allow rounds to be added rapidly (and tested) without swapping magazines.