Professional cyclists spend a lot of time in the wind tunnel perfecting their riding position.

This must be a very tiring shape to maintain if you’re pedaling your way around the Tour de France.

Today’s invention is therefore a new lattice-type bike frame with no crossbar.

Instead, support rails are tailored to a particular rider’s torso.

Between these would be a rib-and-perineum-saving set of pads (blue) designed to take the weight off one’s arms and not increasing drag beyond that of the rider’s own body, whilst still allowing natural breathing movements.

There is a large amount of computing time being devoted these days to simulation of crowds of people. Whether it’s for traffic management or architecture or fire safety analysis, how crowds behave is both important and hard to model.

I have searched for the following idea in various patent databases but failed to find it. Maybe today’s invention exists in the scientific literature on the subject, to which I have no access.

It is simply to create a simulated crowd using computer games graphics, but instead of making individual avatars move according to some small number of agent-type rules, why not gamify the process?

People would sign up to an individual avatar and see the interior of some building as through their eyes. A large number of people online would then attempt to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, whilst avoiding obstacles and each other. The winners would win a range of large prizes.

This approach includes normal psychology of large numbers of real people and might therefore give a more realistic impression of how crowds actually move when suitably motivated. It might even include physical parameters, like the maximum walking speed of an individual.

Did someone mention the January sales?

You can buy all sorts of fancy gizmos if you have a collection of old-fashioned, automatic, mechanical watches that you want to keep wound when they aren’t on your wrist.

Today’s invention is a new, somewhat humorous variant.

It consists of a mainspring and escapement attached to a pendulum (exactly as used to control grandfather clocks). The pendulum in this case consists of one or more watches, so that not only are they kept wound by the mechanism, the whole system allows the owner to read the time via the watch face(s).

Since the period of oscillation (for small angles) is independent of the mass, a small collection of such watches could be arranged to form the pendulum.

Periodically of course, the mainspring will need to be would up tight.

Racing cyclists are obsessive about drag reduction. This is about the only thing I have in common with them.

Today’s invention is a bicycle seat post for racing bikes.

When the cyclist stands in the pedals to race uphill, the seat post withdraws into the frame, thus lessening drag associated with having a long cylinder thrashing around in the airflow from side to side.

The seat might also be especially aerodynamic, with a tapering rear profile.

The rider would then simply touch the lowered seat with his behind when the hill was climbed, for it to rise back into position and lock in place.

I love the competitiveness of boxing but brain damage is a real threat from which no conventional sparring helmet can protect you.

Today’s invention is therefore an unconventional head protector for boxers.

It consists of a plexiglass dome attached to a robot arm. Both boxers would wear one, each bolted to their own ringside robot which could skirt the ringside ledge very fast.

The idea is that the dome would constantly sense its position relative to the wearer’s head -maybe every few milliseconds. The dome would always maintain a distance from the outside of a boxer’s cranium.

When an opponent lands a punch on the dome, the robot arm would react very rapidly to resist both the motion of the incoming glove and the subsequent travel of the dome -so that punches to the head could be automatically recorded without any contact actually being made.

Even if a boxer slipped, the arm would maintain the dome/head distance and then perhaps help cushion the impact between head, dome and canvas.

Even though I’m sceptical about the net value of bottle recycling, I like bottlebanks -maybe it’s partly the urge to avoid waste.

One problem, though, is the terrible continuous noise created when people drive up at random times and smash the contents of several boxes full of empties.

Today’s invention is a way for this smashing to occur only at fixed times.

Glass items would be left in a series of plastic milk crates on top of a cylindrical housing (thus creating very little noise). The crates have no bottom floor.

An inner cylinder (blue) with holes rotates so that when the holes and bottle/jars coincide, the glassware falls through and makes a smashing noise.

This system rotates at a speed which causes the cratefuls all to drop through on the hour, thus causing much less disruptive noise -like a town clock striking.

In addition, the cylinder wall allows people to insert bottles in holes at different heights. As the inner cylinder rotates, these positioned bottles fall inwards creating a slow, introductory ‘chiming’ before the main crash.

Cooked food should always be served piping hot…right?

Well, surely we are past the stage of requiring that everything be sold at a potentially dangerous temperature -just to prove it has had its bacteria stunned into submission.

Today’s invention is an optional extra service for consumers of ‘fast’ food.

Children in particular have difficulty eating food that is too hot for them, so as an alternative to waiting and blowing (hardly hygienic), the proposal is for food sellers to have a portable food chiller.

Food would be thoroughly cooked as usual, but could, for an extra charge, be placed in a compact, circulatory, high-speed wind tunnel. This would be used to cool food to an acceptable, user-chosen temperature…and allow rapid, safe consumption.