Invention Of The Day

#203: Ghostroad

Amazingly, it turns out that elephants can identify different herds miles away by using their feet to sense their neighbours’ characteristic, low frequency rumblings. These sounds are transmitted through the earth as ‘infrasound’ waves, which are only mildly attentuated in transit and which are too low for humans to hear.

Although these noises aren’t experienced by being heard, people do react to infrasound. It tends to create a strong feeling of fearfulness and awe -often associated with apparently ghostly phenomena.

Today’s invention is to use this psychological reaction to encourage motorists to decrease their speed.

Sections of roadway identified as the approaches to accident blackspots could be coated with textured paint (of very low spatial frequency) so that car tyres rolling along would gradually begin to generate infrasound waves and scare drivers enough to make them slow down.

#202: Spout straw

I’m not that fastidious about hygiene, but when someone pours me a drink from a ring-pull can, I can’t help but wonder what the liquid is absorbing en route. Cans often find themselves piled up in some fairly insanitary conditions and given only a quick wipe before being served to the customer.

The design of the ring-pull itself is a masterpiece of invention, but its pouring action is pretty turbulent, especially with carbonated fluids which can flow pretty much anywhere.

Today’s invention is a flexible, reusable plug or grommit which wedges into the ring-pull aperture when the can has been opened and forms a seal there. In the middle of the plug is an internally-streamlined, moulded-in pipe which contains both a liquid outflow passage and an air inflow one, in an attempt to achieve a smoother pouring action.

This allows the drink to get to the glass without washing in whatever crud happens to be on the can’s exterior.

#201: Flicker detector

For those people who suffer from epilepsy, flashing lights of any kind can constitute a threat. Somehow, repeated flashing (as often occurs at discos etc) can trigger an attack, leading to embarrassment, discomfort and possible injury.

Computer screens flickering at 50Hz or less or stuttering fluorescent tubes are particularly prone to provoking fits and the point with these is that, unlike the roller disco example, people are often exposed to these effects for some time without noticing them -then a serious attack may ensue.

Today’s invention is a tiny light sensor and associated electronics which can be worn discreetly by epiletics (especially young people who may be additionally distracted). This would constantly monitor the scene ahead for signs of sustained flickering and provide an unobtrusive buzzing alert, so that the wearer could retreat before succumbing.

#200: Auto-actuary

I’m seriously cheesed off that I can never tell when my aging car is about to develop a need for a terminally-costly repair…ie one which is actually higher in price to fix than the value of the vehicle to me.

I had a BMW once which was in excellent condition, but one day its drive shaft main bearing shattered and the estimated repair cost was thousands of pounds. I tried arguing with the garage that the purchase price premium for such fancy vehicles should make their repair costs lower, but you can imagine the reception i got as a ‘valued customer of BMW‘…Needless to say I don’t buy that brand any more.

The problem is a wider one though, so today’s invention is to provide car owners with access to manufacturers’ data about what repairs are generally required when -for each different model. If I know that a C-class Mercedes will, in general, need a new set of brake discs at 150,000 miles and that the job will cost £2,500, then I can start to calculate how much it’s worth spending on that vehicle, given how long I expect to keep it.

Without this actuarial knowledge, cars can have a small fortune spent on them by owners, whilst garages accept the cash knowing that there is an economically terminal problem looming within the next few months. Access to these data would also have interesting effects on the second hand market (and perhaps ultimately manufacturers would start to build in greater longterm reliability -or at least to create a more predictable pattern of decline for each vehicle).

#199: Bombproof bin

It’s often hard to find a refuse bin nowadays in public places, with the result that all sorts of rubbish just gets dumped anywhere.

The shortage of bins is because authorities are rightly concerned that some crazy terrorist type could use one as a place to dump a bomb, allowing him or her a chance to escape whilst the coundown continued. Many bins are also designed to be hard to shift and therefore make quite an effective grenade if blown apart from within.

Today’s invention is a public-space refuse bin consisting of a cannon-like body capable of not being burst apart by even high explosive. Rubbish would be placed in the bin by the public through the blades of a very coarse, turbine-like lid (which could be unlocked and completely removed under normal circumstances for cleaning).

If an explosive device detonates within the bin, the force of the blast is directed upwards, but instead of firing debris aloft only for it to shower down on people with undiminished force, the high friction, heavy turbine in the top would be rotated by the blast, absorbing much of its energy and retaining a large proportion of any shrapnel behind the spinning blades.

#198: Algorgasm

I’m no expert on what are sometimes called ‘sex toys’ but leaving aside the schoolboyish, smutty marketing, it seems to me that these are often pretty poorly designed as products.

Take vibrators, for example (but only of course if you don’t live in Alabama).

Basically, a small battery-driven motor with an eccentric rotating mass. This is a crude device but judging by sales figures, an effective one. Given what we know about a) electronics and b) human sexual response, it seems to me that maybe there is some scope for a little product development.

Today’s invention is a programmable vibrator, designed to move according to the different stages of sexual excitement in people. This might be supplied with default parameters (in terms of amplitude and frequency) corresponding to average behaviour and then possibly ‘tunable’ according to individual preferences.

There might even be scope for having the vibrations driven by eg thermographic data -creating an external feedback loop in parallel, hopefully, with the internal, neural one.

#197: Stamping personality

We have the technology to digitally watermark postage stamps, in order to limit counterfeiting.

What a pity though, that we can still only buy stamps with eg the Queen’s head on them.

Today’s invention is a conventional stamp, complete with the value displayed and a monarch’s head, if necessary. Instead of adding some standard image, chosen by a government representative, why not let people pay to create their own designs for the remaining space? This could easily be done online (by eg uploading their favourite images). The system would then insert covert anti-copying marks into the new stamp which, although invisible, could later be detected by post office sorting machines (after they had been printed out at a specified number of dots per inch by the customer).

Stamps are so century-before-last, but if we must still use them, maybe we could have some fun by designing our own personalised versions?

#196: Cocktail jukebox

If you are in desperation, cocktail vending machines are a pretty well-established way to obtain an overpriced drink in a slow-serving bar. They are filled with premixed versions of established, run-of-the-mill cocktail concoctions.

As an alternative, today’s invention is a vending machine which allows patrons to dispense a combination of ‘units’ of a number of different drinks (via a set of electronically-controlled ‘optics’).

A customer could select, via a brightly-lit control panel, units of a wide range of drinks (up to a maximum number corresponding to the volume of a glass). They could then name this combination in some ceative way, by typing it in and thus making that drink (and a list of its contents) available for selection by other customers later.

This would encourage experimentation with taste combinations and increase custom. The machine would also contain many fruit juices and certain combinations (eg a pint of vodka) would be forbidden. Customers’ cocktail ‘designs’ could be displayed in order of popularity, just as games machines do, further increasing incentives to experiment.

If health promotion was a priority, it might be possible to list first, those recipes for drinks which contain no alcohol and healthier ingredients .

Guinness shandy, anyone?

#195: Re-search tickboxes

There’s a lot of thinking going on late at night in the labs of various search engine companies. How can they tweak their results ranking so that people get more reliable access to the information they were looking for?

The problem is context. If you search using only one word, eg ‘Chameleon’ are you interested in the creature with the independent eyes, the rock band or one of the twenty or so ‘original thinker’ web design companies by that name?

No search engine can read your mind, so you tend to get dross and then have to repeat your search (rather than scroll through ten pages of results).

Today’s invention is a better way to handle this problem. It would be easier if the searcher could be provided with some kind of tick-box interface, to help specify the context, when first they visit their favourite search engine. To provide a meaningful set of boxes in general is intractable, though. Instead, I suggest the following.

A searcher would undertake a first pass search. He or she would immediately be presented with a spread of results (ideally, one relating to each of the possible different Chameleon entities). The results themselves would simply be the first ten nouns from the front page of each website. These would each then be selectable, by clicking, as a way to refine the next level of search; which would then deliver more of the required data in the usual format. So it’s an automatically generated field of context-sensitive tickboxes.

This would at least limit the madness of being presented with tens of useless results pages.

#194: Tennis tensioner

The Rules of Tennis state that you aren’t allowed to change the tension of your racket strings whilst a point is being played. (Lower tensions generally provide more power and less impact to the arm: higher tensions offer more control and better spin).

It seems, at least until some official body rules against it, that it’s perfectly ok to change one’s racket tension before every point.

In a game that’s constantly being accused of being boring because of the dominance of fast serves, it would certainly increase audience interest if players took advantage of this and attempted to anticipate the optimal string tension for a forthcoming point (based on eg how well they are currently returning serve or in attempts to protect a wrist injury).

Today’s invention is a screw-driven wedge device in the handle of a racket that would, without changing the shape of the head, boost or decrease the tension in the strings. This could be made operable without showing an opponent any new setting which had been selected.