Invention Of The Day – Page 232 – Just another break-step productions sites site

#575: KinCam

The popular press carries a story almost every week about how some parent has been arrested for taking pictures of his own children at a school sportsday. The accusation is always that even an innocent photographer might unwittingly publish images of other people’s children on a public website. The thought of paedophiles downloading those images for their own purposes naturally fills parents with a range of emotions from distaste through horror to outrage.

Today’s invention is therefore a camera which can only take pics of the faces of one’s own children.

Certain digital cameras (‘familycams’?) would be available only eg in fluorescent green, so that only this type could be used to photograph children at events without someone objecting. A photographer would first need to take a fixed number of photos of each member of his/her family. These would be stored as exemplars in the camera.

When taking photographs later, the camera would automatically detect all faces in the shot and obscure any that were not within the family set.

#574: Racebrace

On a good day, I can run for an hour or so without needing an ambulance. I’ve noticed that it’s enormously easier to keep running if I don’t do the instinctive thing of lowering my chin to my chest and ‘digging-in.’ My assumption is that lifting my head allows easier breathing, but whatever the reason, this really helps me cover ground with very much less effort.

Today’s invention is a neck brace -just like those used by people with whiplash injuries, except that this is an ultra-lightweight version with multiple air holes in it to avoid temperature build-up during exercise.

This might also be combined with a pair of sunglasses in which the bottom edges of the lenses are completely obscured -forming vertical blinkers which discourage the tendency to stare at the ground a metre ahead.

#573: Grasstrap

I’ve spent some time thinking about ways to deal with rats. There are numerous approaches, from gassing to poisoning but still rats remain a problem for two main reasons: they eat huge amounts of food and they are also vectors for some pretty nasty diseases.

Any extermination device really needs to attract a rat, kill it and clear the trap for the next victim. All of this to be achieved at minimal expense, of course.

Today’s invention is a delayed-action trap based on the action of wild barley or foxtails. These grasses shed seeds which are barbed and work their way through the fur and skin of a huge range of mammals -eventually killing them if left untreated. I suggest creating a trap in the form of a narrow tunnel into which protrude the seed-barbs of living grasses. A rat squeezing through the box to reach some bait would embed many such barbs in its fur…eventually leading to its death.

The grasses would grow in a tray surrounding the tunnel and would naturally re-seed themselves several times a year. It might be possible to have separate trays for a number of species, with overlapping seeding seasons. A more advanced version would perhaps make use of grasses genetically engineered to have even more penetrative seed barbs.

#572: BladeBlunter

There is a serious problem to do with people carrying knives and getting drawn into using them to ‘settle’ conflicts. Some of these are sold as hunting or ‘survival’ knives, whilst many others are just kitchen knives borrowed in an attempt to appear tough.

In order to cut the numbers of knives which are available for stabbings, today’s invention is a coloured plastic disc, containing adhesive, which, once applied to the point of a blade, is almost impossible to remove.

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Each disc is about the size of a £1 coin and comes with a deep slot in its outer circumference (looking as if a partial attempt had been made to separate the two faces of a coin). Into this, the point of a knife can be inserted. When the disc is pierced by the point of a knife entering the slot, it exudes a small volume of one-part epoxy adhesive which permanently bonds the blunting device to the knife point.

The cutting edge of the knife is still available for legitimate uses, but the point can’t now be used to stab anyone.

#571: Agepage

Many websites aren’t updated very often. In some cases this is merciful (eg ‘my pets/poetry/V8 engine mods’).

Today’s invention is a way to give visitors a rapid, visual indication of the freshness of online content. The elements of a webpage which had not been updated recently would be modified, on the fly, by one’s browser. At its simplest, this would involve a browser plug-in which detects stale content and greys it out, by replacing graphics and text with versions decoloured in proportion to the date of the latest change made to the page.

More spohisticated versions might auto-age faces, add noise, simulate cobwebs, apply sepia tinting and replace modern looking fonts with eg Gothic or Copperplate variants.

#570: Flowfilters

People who wear glasses still have a certain amount of faffing about to do when the sun shines brightly. They can have their glasses tinted or use reactolite lenses, but these can be insufficiently responsive to rapidly changing lighting conditions.

Today’s invention is glasses which have a rapidly changeable filter built in. Each lens would be backed by a very thin sheet of plastic, offset from the lens surface itself by a fraction of a millimeter. The spaces between sheet and lens would be filled with a film of water (engineered to be nearly refractively neutral). These spaces would communicate with each other via a small-bore pipe running within the bridge of the glasses. A similar pipe would be embedded in each ‘leg’ of the specs.

The flow circuit thus formed would allow water to be quickly pumped from a reservoir in a pocket, up a pipe to behind one ear, from lens to lens and back down to a different reservoir. This could be by electrical pumping or via manual bellows.

The water would be filled with dye which would shade the eyes. The concentration could be varied automatically by feedback from a light sensor located on the glasses frame.

Dyes of different colour could be used to provide a match with one’s couture du jour. Stopping the flow, with one lens red and one green, would allow the wearer to view 3-D imagery with maximal convenience.

#569: Drivadvisor

It seems, from recent research, that in general, drivers are less likely to behave recklessly or inattentively if they have passengers in the car. This is believed to be due to the responsibility which a driver feels towards his or her charges.

So if we consider newly-qualified drivers, we could arrange a parent pooling scheme in which each driver was always accompanied by some combination of responsible, older relatives. This wouldn’t be very practical, but today’s invention suggests a way to curb road craziness by the use of simple technology.

Each newly qualified driver would have to carry a webcam the images from which would be wirelessly communicated to a website viewable only by a designated subset of their family members. The camera would automatically shut off when the car was parked. After a trip, the monitors could independently text or email their comments or suggestions in connection with manoeuvres which seemed less than safe. This resembles the ‘well-driven?’ stickers on some commerial vehicles, but based on a much bigger personal investment in providing useful feedback.

In this way, at the cost of some loss of privacy, the driver would be aware of the potential virtual presence of some guardians/scrutineers and thus be less inclined to misbehave at the wheel.

#568: Handholds

Many people who have to operate hand-held machines for protracted periods develop joint and nervous disorders (eg ‘white finger’). Now that robotic hands have reached a level of extreme strength and sensitivity, it’s possible to reduce this problem.

Each item of equipment (road drills, steering wheels, whatever) would have a pair of robot hands attached -using rigid mechanical clamps in the ‘wrist’ sections.

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The robotic hands would then be free to grip the wrists or forearms of the tool user (as their own hands direct the tool in the usual way). This would greatly reduce the stresses experienced. The robotic hands would be sensitive enough to provide optimal support but without ever gripping the user too tightly. They would also be able to detect when the human was tiring and require them to take a safety-related tea break.

#567: Soundboard

Yesterday I found that it’s all too possible to pay £60 for a keyboard (the ‘p’ on one of mine broke and rendered the whole thing economically unfixable). I don’t even like keyboards.

Today’s invention is a simplified, low cost version. Think of a conventional computer keyboard but this is made from a single piece of (eco-friendly, sustainable) wood. The keys therefore don’t depress but all the surface features of a normal board are present. This allows all the usual nailclippings and food remnants to be caught on the board and simply brushed off into the bin.

In order to actually control your computer, each key has a blind hole drilled into the back. The depth of each hole is unique to the key in question. When someone types on any given key, the air column in the hole vibrates, in a characteristic way -just like an organ pipe (and largely independent of the force with which the key has been struck).

A microphone embedded in the board would allow the machine to identify which key had been tapped. Ctrl and Caps Lock functions etc could be arranged by hinging the board at the rear edge and allowing the front edge to rise above the desktop to one of several different heights -thus modifying mechanically the depth of all the blind holes.

#566: Fingerlick’n bad

My local supermarket encourages people to choose their own fruit etc and to put these items in plastic bags. Leaving aside the fact that the bags themselves are an environmental problem, I’m most concerned about the public health implications.

Irrespective of the exact details of the pack in which these bags are supplied (box or roll), they are always tightly sandwiched together and often mutually attracted by static charges: it’s a hard job just to separate them from each other (in the same way that it’s difficult to open one to insert eg fruit).

People invariably lick their thumb and forefinger before grabbing at a number of bags in order to peel off just one (I have seen customers actually blowing on the edge of the stack of bags). The result is that large numbers of bags are effectively licked before you put your hands and food in there…it’s not a reassuring thought.

Today’s invention is a plastic bag dispenser which helps to select a single bag, with minimal contamination. This consists of the usual flattish cardboard box filled with a multilayer sandwich of bags. Each box would be fitted with a plastic roller, the outer rubberised surface of which would be coated in something antibacterial like microban. The roller axle would be moored loosely in slots on each side of the exit end of the box. One face of the roller would be in contact with the bags, the other protruding through a window in the box top. Shoppers would press on the roller and rotate it away from the outlet slot, causing a single bag to be extracted from the box at a time (by friction between bag and rubber surface).

Once a bag protrudes from the box, it could be dragged out and torn off as usual. Fingers would thus be excluded from the stack of bags.