#1278: Ringseats

I read today that people sitting within five rows of an exit have a greatly improved chance of exiting a plane unscathed in an emergency.

Today’s invention is to equip new airliners with benchseats arranged in circular arcs around the doors of an airliner. This allows everyone to be sitting within only a few rows of an exit (it might be possible to sell sets in row five from an exit at lower prices than seats in rows closer to the door).

The seats would be colour-coordinated with the doors so that everyone would know which to exit by.

Some people would end up sitting facing backwards (but that too is safer, usually).

#1277: Airshield

Modern snipers can kill people who are up to two miles away. To do this, they use some very advanced calculations to adjust their aim according to the anticipated effects of wind, humidity, altitude etc.

These influences are so great that snipers may have to aim at a point 2m to one side of their actual target.

Today’s invention is a defence mechanism against such attacks. The blue force roll out a camouflaged line of sensors B, using eg a radio controlled robot vehicle. These lie on two parallel tracks, so that the passage overhead of the shock wave of a high-velocity bullet can be detected and its direction estimated.

This information is sent wirelessly to a line of air blowers A (faster than the bullet can travel). A few of these can issue an upwards jet of air in a random direction, from underneath the passing round.

This deflection can be more than enough to cause the shot to miss with very high probability; alerting the blue force to red’s position and undermining the sniper’s confidence.

#1276: FauxFlue

Today’s invention is a false chimney for wood-burning stoves, which allows large bits of timber to be burned -ie without having to chop them into pieces small enough to insert via the front door.

Door A in the false chimney is opened and a large piece of wood inserted. Door A is closed and the door B opened, allowing the wood to drop into the flames.

When B can be slid into the closed position again, A can be reopened and the cycle repeated.

#1275: MatrixMat

Today’s invention is a doormat which consists of a flat matrix of short, vertical, plastic tubes all of which are sealed into a base tray.

The tray is connected to a vacuum cleaner device.

When someone is sensed to have stepped onto the mat, the vacuum cleaner motor starts up and draws air down through the matrix of tubes.

This extracts from the feet of the visitor a large volume of dust and debris which would otherwise be walked into carpets etc. This collected mess can occasionally be tipped from the tray into a waste bin.

#1274: AirPads

Given the enormous cost of buying soccer players and their hypersensitivity to injury, I’m surprised to find nothing like today’s invention in the patent databases (although there are 750,000 applications still waiting to be examined at USPTO, so it may already have been applied for).

Shin pads with automobile-like airbags which inflate explosively on impact.

It’s true that these would occasionally inflate when the ball was miskicked and they might cause opposing players’ legs to spring apart violently on impact, but since everyone would be wearing these, and the amplitude of inflation would be small, the protection would be shared.

Once one’s pads had fired, they would be quickly replaced from the sidelines with a new pair.

#1273: BackFire

One of the arguments for allowing people to keep handguns is that these are needed for home defence purposes. There are (usually) legal limits, however, to what a householder can do to defend themselves and their property.

One of the common indicators to a court of an appropriate defensive response to being attacked is when the self-defender can prove that they tried their best to get away and avoid physical violence.

Today’s invention is a low-velocity handgun round for home defence purposes. As well as a reduced charge, each such round contains a small accelerometer sealed inside. This will only allow a bullet to be fired if it has first been moving in a backwards direction for some prespecified interval.

Such bullets are therefore very difficult to use in any attack, so that anyone attempting to buy the ordinary sort can be identified as having some kind of offensive behaviour in mind (without limiting anyone’s legal rights to carry weapons).

#1272: PedalPad

A friend of mine recently cycled 81 miles in a race. The vibration through the seat was so prolonged and intense that he was doubtful about fathering any additional children (for an hour or so post-race, anyway).

Bicycle saddle designers have attempted to deal with this problem by creating all sorts of slots in seats, gel packs etc.

Instead, today’s invention takes the form of a frontal pelvis pad which a rider straps to himself before getting on a bike with no saddle at all. The pad is held in place using a strap under the buttocks, but nothing goes near one’s pudendum.

The pad has a stub rigidly attached which engages with a slot on an upwardly-curved crossbar. This allows a cyclist to stand up on the pedals as usual but when later he wants to sit down, his weight is instead supported by leaning forwards and down on the pad (as well as some tension in the strap).

If the cycle crashes, the stub disconnects from the slot just as his feet disconnect from the pedals.

#1271: TiltTurn

I’m sick of hearing how the g forces on racing drivers require them to spend six hours lifting weights with their necks every day before selling some more after-shave and watches (and that they still have to strap their helmets to the vehicles during races, just to get around corners).

Today’s invention is a gimbaled driver’s seat which rotates during high speed cornering, so that a driver’s body is more closely aligned with the direction of centripetal acceleration, thus lessening any asymmetrical stresses and allowing safer cornering.

#1270: HueView

This questionnaire in which people were asked to name colours takes no account of eg the adjacent hues or edge conditions, but it’s fascinating, nonetheless.

The map at the bottom was surprising, since you might expect a more uniform, rays-of-the-sun distribution within RGB space. Instead, it seems many more shades are labeled red than blue, for example.

If it’s true that we can discriminate many fewer blues than reds, then this immediately offers a new colour image compression algorithm.

At its simplest, each pixel in an image would be assigned a certain colour ‘depth’ in terms of bits. Fewer bits could be assigned to local shades of blue than to shades of red, for example, in proportion to the areas indicated on the XKCD map.

This could be extended to optimise discrimination at the boundaries between adjacent regions of the map (so that more bits could be allocated to emphasise the difference between eg a yellow and an orange).

#1269: BitStop

Thinking about electric vehicles and mechanisms for swapping batteries, the idea took off in my head that existing methods of supplying fuels to vehicles are fairly primitive.

Instead of pumping petroleum-type fuel as a continuous stream, why not provide it in discrete units?

Today’s invention is a vending machine for standard-sized jerrycans of fuel. Users can find these located on the edge of town. They roll up, exchange a used can for a new one using their credit card inserted in a slot in the machine. (If their current can isn’t quite empty, they get a credit for the weighed remains, which are automatically pooled within in the machine to fill other cans. These amounts eventually amount to a whole ‘free’ unit of fuel).

The can is then stabbed into a connector on board their vehicle. The refuelling time could be under one minute. Once a week, say, a van arrives and replaces a whole machine with one full of new cans.

This has the added benefit that the fuel is kept sealed away from people. It’s also available in smaller, safer amounts, supported by many fewer staff, more locally and with less high-street queueing/disruption.