Today’s invention is a robotic device which can tilt a cup of freshly-poured latte and, using a dipper, draw shapes in the microbubble milk foam on the top.
This would be a programmable device capable of producing designs chosen by customers from a jukebox like menu.
It would also be able to write short printed messages in the foam, as typed into a keypad by the barrista.
Today’s invention is a way for drivers of left-hand-drive-vehicles to overtake more safely.
A periscope is mounted across the top of the dashboard with a motor driven mirror unit protruding through the window (extendable when overtaking is anticipated.
This allows the driver to rotate the mirror unit and see what’s behind and in front using only small lateral movements of the vehicle.
The unit might obviously be reused to help drivers of right-hand-drive cars in lhd countries.
I’m always interested in ways to deal with birdstrikes on jet planes.
Today’s invention is basically a Dyson vortex vacuum cleaner cylinder bolted to the front of a jet engine.
Blades inside the sleeve rotate the incoming air (not so much as to churn the incoming flow to the fan, but enough to deflect say a 1kg bird to the periphery and exhaust it, as shown).
My back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that it might be possible to get a bird out of the way using a tube ~3m long, but the extra fuel costs, due to drag and weight, are harder to quantify).
In future, when travelling between solar systems, astronauts will need spacestations and other equipment for colonisation and life support.
Rather than attempt to take this stuff with them, at huge cost, space travellers will need to take only a very large tube of adhesive.
Today’s invention is to skirt interstellar dustclouds, harvest this material (over a long time) and then use desktop manufacturing techniques to assemble structural components needed for repairs or landings, as needed, whilst in flight.
The dust might be bonded together into useful material (with locally optimised density and strength) via a combination of home-bought epoxy and pressure moulding processes (using the spacecraft internal pressure vs the vacuum of space).
If you want to distribute aid packages from the air, dropping them in one lump can be dangerous and ineffective (the impact of packages on each other can destroy the contents and the whole lot may disappear into a single lake).
Today’s invention makes use of the lift force generated on a spinning cylinder.
Drop cylindrical packages after they have been spun up to a random speed (and direction) on board the plane (using eg a rolling road device).
As they fall, the packages experience different lateral forces, causing them to disperse over a large area.
The streets are full of ‘furniture’ in the form of signage and lights -most of which is constructed from heavy-gauge metal tubing. Drive into one of these and you can expect to get decelerated very fast as well as becoming too closely acquainted with it via the windscreen.
Today’s invention is a small robot which travels along streets in search of cylindrical, vertical metal poles of about 80-100mm in diameter. When one is detected, the robot attaches itself and, using a small internal grinder wheel, gouges out a circumferential arc-shaped trench near the pole’s base.
This has the effect of weakening the metal just enough that a collision will cause it to bend away from the vehicle near ground level without jack-knifing it inside or firing it, javelin-like, across the road.
Given the simple, specific geometry, such robots might even undertake this task largely unsupervised.
As you drive from state to state in the US, or even between certain countries in the EU, important laws can change suddenly without your being aware of it.
Today’s invention is a modification to one’s in-car GPS system which detects the crossing of any such border and flags up the most important changes in the law that just occurred.
Those laws involving transport would be emphasised and the system might also take into account the probability of occurrence as well as the severity of the penalties for transgression.
Einstein once said that an hour talking to a pretty girl seemed to pass more quickly than usual. Time feels different depending on one’s level of attention/commitment.
Today’s invention is a computer system clock which knows, from one’s calendar and the applications in use, the kind of activities being undertaken at any point throughout the day.
It also has a record, made earlier by the user, of how boring certain types of activity are for that individual.
The clock then indicates subjective time -so that lunctime seems over in ten minutes and that 20-minute PowerPoint presentation by your boss seems to take an hour.
Today’s invention is an electronically simulated mirror with special features. This would contain a camera system capable of detecting a face appearing in front of the screen.
This screen could be set to display the camera’s moving image of the person appearing in front of it, as usual. The invention would be to store a variety of movies of different people in front of their mirrors.
When your mirror ‘saw’ your face, it could detect the presence of eg hands and eyeblinks, smiles and nods and display those elements extracted and stitched together from someone else’s stored reflection (in the right places, very nearly in realtime and smoothed together to create the illusion of lifelike movements).
If you wanted always to see yourself as you were ten years ago, then this would be possible (using recorded footage or that of an avatar, based on some stills and a regression algorithm). You could even choose to view yourself as an ancestor, perhaps or a celebrity. This might also help people who had been disfigured to regain some confidence.
The last thing the US needs is more handguns, but their manufacture is a big industry which employs thousands of people.
Today’s invention is a novelty aftermarket handgun grip for proud residents of elongate states -such as California and Florida.
The grips would be manufactured to resemble the distinctive shapes of the states themselves on a map.
