Category: Possible inventions

Some of the hard plastic boxes which house products on sale are great for protecting the contents in transit and making them visible on the shelves.

The trouble is that you need a hammer and chisel to get them open, which can sometimes result in damaging the delicate product within. So people inevitably use their teeth…generally a bad choice and ironic if the the product is a toothbrush.

Today’s invention is a device a little like a staple remover. This is effectively a pair of substitute metal teeth and cheap enough to be supplied as part of the plastic packaging.

A user repeatedly bites down on the integral pads (using muscle-powered molars rather than canines), piercing the packaging and driving the ‘teeth’ gradually around the outer seam of the pack.

There’s not much that can be done to improve on the basic bicycle design.

Today’s invention, though, is an attempt to provide all-wheel drive to this venerable contraption.

It only takes a few degrees of handlebar rotation to steer a bike: any more and you simply fall off. This allows both wheels to be driven by a flexible, toothed rubber belt which passes over a drive wheel in the middle and coordinated derailleurs on each wheel hub.

It opens up the possibility of optimising the angular velocity of each wheel independently, improving traction on a variety of surfaces.

Adverts fascinate me…mostly because the process by which people, including me, buy stuff in response to such promptings is not at all understood.

Today’s invention is a new form of advertisement which would be embedded in products – potentially in all locations which suffer from wear over time.

One example might be the soles on a pair of shoes. As these get worn, an image embedded in the material is gradually revealed. This process could be timed (by knowledge of average wear rates) to occur just as the product was about to be thrown away, saying things like “if you liked this, then get the latest from www.newandshiny.com”

Such images might be made in layers so that longlived products could reveal small recommendations for many different, related items over time.

Driving in heavy rain, I’m always intimidated by the spray thrown up when passing a heavy lorry. This obscures my vision and compromises safety, irrespective of how fast the wipers are moving.

Today’s invention is a wide-angle camera which is mounted on a stalk and which can be extended forwards of the windscreen and ahead of all of the oncoming spray. The camera lens would project with a lens cap in place to keep it dry as it penetrates the spray. Then the cap would be moved out of the way (its small aperture would be much easier to keep rain-free than a whole windscreen).

This allows the driver of a vehicle to view a monitor inside the screen which shows a clear picture of the road ahead.

Vehicle insurance companies can charge what they like, since we all must be insured to drive. Today’s invention is an opportunity for one of them to break ranks and make the costs fit the risk for each customer.

It consists of an in-vehicle computer which calculates the journey risk profile each time you turn the key in the ignition, based on some stored data and by answering a few extra questions.

It seems that the time of day affects the chance of an accident, as does the weather forecast, driver details and the maintenance history of the vehicle. This information would be stored in the system.

Specifying your planned route on Google maps, via an onboard screen, would allow all this information to be mashed up and a real-time quote generated. This would be authorised to be paid, using one’s stored account details, before the journey began.

Pedestrian crossings often get put where people don’t actually want to cross the road. Today’s invention simply detects where people cross most frequently and puts the crossing there.

This consists of a small, motorised cart which moves very slowly, and changes direction randomly, along the edge of a street -staying in contact with the kerb.

It projects a set of bright, laser light zebra stripes across the road so that the current position of the crossing is very visible to both vehicle drivers and pedestrians.
The cart keeps track of its historical positions along the kerb and the the number of times that its projected bars are reflected back by crossing pedestrians at each location (it would ignore things passing over the crossing in the road direction, like wheels). The cart would also remain unaware of people crossing in other places (ie whenever it happened to be inconveniently placed).

The device moves less as its foot traffic rises and eventually positions itself so as to be where people choose to cross most frequently (until eg some change in the street forces people to cross elsewhere, at which time the process of adaptation restarts).

Marine creatures are increasingly tagged electronically…both to help preserve their species but also to understand the geophysics of their environment.

One problem with tagging devices is that they contain a large battery, which limits operational life but also pollutes the marine environment when it falls off the animal.

Today’s invention is a very small water turbine device which would use the swimming speed of eg a seal, dolphin, turtle or shark to generate electricity pretty continuously and drive the tag’s electronics.

This could stay on the animal for much longer than a battery powered system, be physically smaller and also be constructed mostly from metal components designed to corrode completely after a long period in salt water.

Long before 1969 I had a love of all things to do with manned spaceflight. Even then, I knew it makes no sense to attempt to fire people into space using ‘superguns’, because humans don’t stand up well to the forces involved.

I’m always struck, when watching a launch that, of the fuel used in the first few seconds after ignition, about 30% is wasted in shaking the ground and heating the surrounding air.

Today’s invention is a launch tower in the form of a vertical tube embedded in the platform and which contains the rocket itself (with no seal between vehicle and tube). It constrains the rocket exhaust somewhat when performing at its worst -during the first seconds of flight.

This efficiency increase could result in a decreased total fuel load requirement and noise emission -as well as offering some additional protection to groundcrew and simplifying the mechanics of tower movement.

Today’s invention is a bicycle with a larger than average solid front wheel.

The handlebars can be rotated and locked as shown, allowing the rider to dismount and shelter from any downpours by walking along under the front wheel.