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.

How to get people seated quickly on an airliner? Some passengers are naturally slower-moving than others but some are totally unaware of the fact that they may be obstructing the embarkation process by dallying in a narrow aisle.

Airports already force passengers to walk significant distances between check-in and departure lounge. Today’s invention is to equip both these points with a ticket barrier, like the ones in railway stations.

Passengers would use their flight ticket to gain entry and the system would record transit time between these two locations. Boarding would then occur by displaying ticket numbers in order of passenger speed. The faster movers would board first, allowing staff more time to help the slower ones aboard afterwards.

This also creates lower frustration levels and injects an extra gamification element for highly impatient individuals.

Ballooning is not a sport for the impatient.

Today’s invention attempts to reduce both the awful hanging about and the potential damage to the balloon’s surface which conventional approaches entail.

The balloon basket (yellow) has a burner unit attached permanently above (red). Located above that is a telescopic carbon-fibre tower with a ‘mushroom’ on top.

The balloon is transported on top of the mushroom with the tower retracted. On arrival, the tower is lengthened, lifting the balloon upwards and sucking in air via the pipe at the bottom right. The burner is fired and the envelope inflated.

The tower and mushroom fly inside the inflated balloon and support it again on landing.

No more dropping the fragile balloon on the surface of an unfamiliar field, trampling about inside and flapping the edge ineffectually before engaging the burner in the hope that the weather won’t worsen.