Pedestrian crossings often get put where people don’t actually want to cross the road. Today’s invention simply detects where people cross most frequently and puts the crossing there.

This consists of a small, motorised cart which moves very slowly, and changes direction randomly, along the edge of a street -staying in contact with the kerb.

It projects a set of bright, laser light zebra stripes across the road so that the current position of the crossing is very visible to both vehicle drivers and pedestrians.
The cart keeps track of its historical positions along the kerb and the the number of times that its projected bars are reflected back by crossing pedestrians at each location (it would ignore things passing over the crossing in the road direction, like wheels). The cart would also remain unaware of people crossing in other places (ie whenever it happened to be inconveniently placed).

The device moves less as its foot traffic rises and eventually positions itself so as to be where people choose to cross most frequently (until eg some change in the street forces people to cross elsewhere, at which time the process of adaptation restarts).

Marine creatures are increasingly tagged electronically…both to help preserve their species but also to understand the geophysics of their environment.

One problem with tagging devices is that they contain a large battery, which limits operational life but also pollutes the marine environment when it falls off the animal.

Today’s invention is a very small water turbine device which would use the swimming speed of eg a seal, dolphin, turtle or shark to generate electricity pretty continuously and drive the tag’s electronics.

This could stay on the animal for much longer than a battery powered system, be physically smaller and also be constructed mostly from metal components designed to corrode completely after a long period in salt water.

Long before 1969 I had a love of all things to do with manned spaceflight. Even then, I knew it makes no sense to attempt to fire people into space using ‘superguns’, because humans don’t stand up well to the forces involved.

I’m always struck, when watching a launch that, of the fuel used in the first few seconds after ignition, about 30% is wasted in shaking the ground and heating the surrounding air.

Today’s invention is a launch tower in the form of a vertical tube embedded in the platform and which contains the rocket itself (with no seal between vehicle and tube). It constrains the rocket exhaust somewhat when performing at its worst -during the first seconds of flight.

This efficiency increase could result in a decreased total fuel load requirement and noise emission -as well as offering some additional protection to groundcrew and simplifying the mechanics of tower movement.

Today’s invention is a bicycle with a larger than average solid front wheel.

The handlebars can be rotated and locked as shown, allowing the rider to dismount and shelter from any downpours by walking along under the front wheel.

Formula one motor racing has the quality of the peacock’s tail about it…mostly for show and without a great deal of realworld functionality. Nevertheless, it’s such an exuberant display of engineering that I’ve got to love it.

Even something as mundane as changing tyres is transformed by F1 into a mini opera. The instant the car stops, it’s manually jacked up by only a few inches off the pitlane floor. Tyres changed, the jack is released and the car hits the deck. Millisecond mistakes here cost championship points (and horrifying amounts of cash).

Today’s invention is therefore a spring-loaded jack which doesn’t just drop the car but which fires it downwards at an acceleration greater than 9.81ms^-2. Doubling the downwards acceleration saves about 40 ms (ie about 3m when travelling at top speed…easily the difference between first and second place in a tight race).

If the rules allow it, this descent might be coordinated with the engine so that the wheels hit the deck (harder) whilst spinning at exactly the right rotation rate to give maximal acceleration from the pit lane.