What’s better than having a car with gullwing doors? A car with two sets of gullwing doors.
Today’s invention is simply to equip such vehicles with a second set of slim covers which fit closely on the normal doors but which can be opened in transit.
When driving at high speed, these act as aerodynamic stabilisers, providing variable downforce and some additional steering effect as their degree of opening is automatically varied.
It’s a major pain when a pen in my pocket leaks and ruins my favourite shirt or a glass of Medoc somehow misses my mouth and defaces a much-loved tie.
Today’s invention is a scanner/printer which examines any such stain and decides which shape it most closely resembles in a database of stored items. This would take into account the colour of the stain and the probability of overprinting with a darker colour.
The device then offers the user the chance to overprint the stain with either a one-off ‘logo’ or a repeating pattern based on the modified stain shape. Once a choice of disguise shape has been chosen, the printer applies this in order to obscure the stain and make the item of clothing usable again.
Fast food is everywhere and so is its discarded packaging.
Those expanded polystyrene boxes are dirt cheap and thermally insulating and many people seem to have few reservations about just dropping them anywhere but in a bin.
Today’s invention is to supply fast food in these boxes but to have them formed into 3D masks. The faces could be of celebrities but even more interesting is the possibility of having a box vending machine in each fast food store capable of scanning a customer face and heat moulding a box in real-time (Perhaps this could be achieved by pressing one’s face into a plastic pillow to form a reusable mould against which a sheet of polystyrene could be vacuum formed).
This would give people pause for thought about pitching their own face on the ground: not least because it could identify them later.
I was inspired by this guy‘s tip-jet helicopter to apply the principle to terrestrial vehicles.
Today’s invention is a new form of motor in which each wheel has a number of jets fitted on the periphery of its rim. These jets are designed to maintain a horizontal, rearwards pointing orientation as the wheel turns.
Each jet is supplied with a gas at a pressure which is regulated to increase as its height above the road increases.
Since each wheel turns instantaneously about the road contact point (assuming good grip) this distribution of force provides a near-maximal torque characteristic.
This would require a tank of highly compressed gas (eg air) to be carried, but is much less ‘lossy’ than supplying the gas to a conventional car engine to drive pistons etc. Drive to each wheel could be optimised by the use of electronic control valves in each wheel.
Minefields aren’t ever really ethical, even if they are defending your family from some foreign army. Today’s invention is a new way to lay mines which is somewhat less horrendous than normal.
A robot device is programmed to traverse a stretch of territory, pressing into the ground small, bullet-like mines (designed to hold up an attack, by inflicting minimal wounds when triggered by an incautious boot).
The robot keeps a very careful record of where these devices are placed, laying them randomly within a designated secret region. It then parks itself prominently somewhere where there is no mine.
The approaching army sees the bot, understands there is a minefield ahead and makes a cellphone call to the number displayed on its casing.
This causes the robot to start retracing its steps, neutralising the mines by firing them vertically upwards. This it does however exceptionally slowly.
When the process is complete, the bot destroys itself. The result is that a cheap minefield has delayed an oncoming army, been completely cleared and left no technology behind to be ‘repurposed’.
If I’m staying in a hotel, it’s often hard to work out which room is making that infernal racket late at night.
Today’s invention is a way to help. Each room would have a touch sensitive cube on a fixed stalk. If the occupants were bothered by noise, they could simply press the sides to show from which direction it seemed to be coming. This would send signals to a central computer allowing the offending room to be identified as shown.
It might even be possible (joy) for this to result in the automatic volume reduction or disconnection of any TVs or stereos plugged in within that room (perhaps in proportion to the number of other guests irritated).
Mobile phones typically have 8+ megapixel cameras built in.
Rather than have to raise these to one’s face, I’d like to be able to just record what I see. Today’s invention therefore is to mount one such camera in the frame of some spectacles.
The rest of the electronics, including power supply, could be held on a pocket unit which would also accommodate a remote shutter release.
When you want a record of whatever you are looking at, simply stare at it and press the button.
I sometimes see young men who have been facially disfigured in a brawl with someone using a broken bottle or glass. This is a problem significant enough for pint glasses themselves to have been redesigned.
Today’s invention is a simple device to be used in pubs. Before a bottle is de-capped and handed to a customer, the bartender inserts it into a circular aperture and turns it through 360 degrees.
This aperture contains a small diamond glass cutter which scores around the neck of any bottle, 30mm from the cap.
It’s exceptionally difficult to break any bottle cleanly, so the effect that this scoring will have is that the bottle, held by the neck, will snap, when it is struck on a table top to make a weapon, in such a way that the potential attacker is left holding a very short, painfully jagged piece of glass.
Not only is this hard to hold and therefore pretty useless as a weapon, it also makes them look rather ridiculous.
There is an entire industry devoted to helping people get the tops off jars.
Today’s invention is another such kitchen device. It consists of a thin square of recyclable plastic material with a strong sticky pad on one side.
This is perforated along a wiggly line so the user can break it into two pieces. One is pressed and stuck to the jar cap as shown, the other is attached to the jar bottom. The fingers protruding on one side of the jar allow for a massively improved grip -even for those with dexterity or finger strength difficulties.
The pads stay in place and don’t affect the glass recycling process much more than the labels on the jar.
Today’s invention reinvents the wheel…again. It started by thinking about how animals like the cheetah move at speed by flinging back legs forward over front legs which are gripping the ground -even very rough ground.
A vehicle (blue) is fitted with a large number of axles. Each has a cylindrical sleeve on both ends which rotate with the axle. In the sleeve, a ‘leg’ is located, so that it can be driven axially within the sleeve (perhaps by use of a screw thread driven by a motor on each axle).
The vehicle would have many wheels operating in sequence, as shown -allowing the overlapping legs to reach forward, grip the ground, push backwards and then be withdrawn axially (or rotated) for a new cycle.
This would allow rapid cross-country movement, potentially with no vertical motion of the vehicle body.
