#2747: BendLens

I’ve been trying to take exciting film footage of motorcycles, for a forthcoming tourism project. It tends to be easier to work with a good quality DSLR camera mounted inside a following car.

The downside, though, is that cars don’t lean and the footage looks relatively static and boring.

Today’s invention is a reverse gimbal: a camera mount which leans the camera to the left as the car goes around a left hand bend.

In reality, this would be achieved by a servo motor wired to the car’s existing stability control sensors, but I’ve shown a simple, ‘Coriolis acceleration’ version.

A red weight, heavier than the camera, is attached to a pole and the whole thing can pivot on the dashboard.

As the car turns to the left, the weight tends to stay where it is relative to the car and thus the camera tilts in the same way as the biker in front leans.

#2746: GunBattery

Electric motors are great for providing high torque, as needed in an armoured vehicle.

The enormous weight of the necessary batteries is a problem, so today’s invention is to use them outside the tank -as extra or replacement armour.

Refuelling is then just about throwing some batteries away and plugging others in (in parallel).

This would allow any conventional vehicle batteries to be used (not Li ion ones).

If both the road wheels and drive sprockets all had their own motors, this would reduce the size of the vehicle and also make it less vulnerable to local damage.

#2745: SuckerStickers

I don’t think much of vacuum cleaners: even the best suffer from avoidable design flaws.

Dysons have all the usual shortfalls, as well as some of their own and they cost £200 more than their rivals.

Maybe I dislike them most because Mr Dyson persists in mythologising about the utility of intellectual property for inventors.

Anyway, today’s invention is an attempt to introduce some levity into the somewhat self-regarding world of Dyson hoovers.

It’s a set of stick-on aftermarket facial features for Dysons (to make them look more like Henrys)…and convert them into James; a rather ponsified, know-it-all character who employs other, menial cleaners to deal with the actual dirt.

#2744: ShadowShield

A new technique has been shown to be effective in reducing collisions between birds and wind turbine blades.

Bird strikes are a big hazard for planes too but painting one blade on each propellor of an aircraft black would not be effective, given their rotational speed.

Today’s invention, however, is to equip even jet planes with projectors which create high contrast shadows moving over the airframe.

This would simulate the visual effect of several large, slow moving blades and the imagery could be tuned for maximum effectiveness..

#2743: Hidelivery

Today’s invention is a box which looks like an outside air conditioner (complete with the appearance of a fan and plumbing).

This is actually empty and with a keypad-secure lid.

Anything sizeable ordered from eg Amazon will be labelled with instructions to leave it inside the air conditioner, together with the code for the lock.

If nobody is at home, thieves who steal things from porches will be thwarted.

#2742: ClimberTimer

There is an interesting, simple test of one’s nervous system health- how long can you stand on one leg (it’s harder with your eyes closed)?

People, especially older people, have very serious accidents climbing ladders…some of these are caused by a failure of balance.

Invention of the day, then, is a ladder fitted with a small electronic scale on the lowest rung, linked to a lock which prevents extending the ladder.

This system requires you to stand on the scale for a minimum time, before it can be opened and used for actually climbing.

#2741: Meditation measure

When running, I find that, as I breathe out, I tend to count. When I reach 50 I reset to 1. This process seems to induce (or be) some kind of trance.

Sometimes I find I have counted to say 65 without noticing.

This suggests that I have come up with a measure for the depth of my running trance state at any time.

ie 65-50 = 15 = depth of the trance. (Or, if you are a pernickity Physicist, we could normalise that by dividing by 50).

#2740: DriftDye

Drifting cars is now a common form of entertainment.

Today’s invention is a drift car tyre which is made with different coloured dyes embedded within its layers.

As the performance continues, the crowd gets to see changes in the colour of smoke produced. It might be possible to achieve a similar effect by attaching a disc to each wheel so that, as it spins, the outer edge rubs on the road and generates eg pyrotechnic effects or just frictional sparks.

There could even be a colour of tyre dye chosen to indicate that a lower safety limit had been reached.

#2739: WaveWing

There is something very romantic about the old idea of driving your classic Porsche 911 to the beach with a surfboard on the roof.

Porsches have, over the 50 years of the 911’s history, been fitted with some enormous inverted wings.

Today’s invention is therefore a surfboard which can be carried on your sportscar (laterally) but which acts as a detachable downforce wing, when the car is in motion.

#2738: DatingTimer

When using a messaging app for dating purposes, people are currently faced these days with an optimisation problem: how long to wait before responding to his/her last message?

Respond after too big a delay and you risk losing their attention. Go back too soon and you look desperate.

Today’s invention is an upgrade to a dating app which asks its users to alert it when they have achieved ‘relationship success’ (however they define that).

Then, in the background, their messaging history is analysed, so that any pattern can be extracted and amalgamated with the patterns of other couples who have become an item.

This information is then used to issue alerts to people in a proto-couple, such as ‘He was last in touch via a 100 character msg two hours ago. At this stage of your relationship, you should consider responding with less than 20 characters in five minutes.’