Guest post -Rob Tillaart

Rob Tillaart, a good friend of IOTD over the years, recently sent me some of his ideas for inclusion here:

Saw this one -and got the following ideas:

1) connecting air craft carriers

suppose you have 2 air craft carriers, and you would “connect” them back to back, the landing strip would become twice as long.
So instead of making one big ACC it might be cheaper to create multiple that can connect.
The connection itself should be removable in seconds in case of emergencies.

2) drones capture a plane
imagine several small but strong drones connecting electromagnetically to an airplane (esp in trouble)
plane stops engines and drones fly him home. Drones can be reused and do not need to
have a long range.

…
After a few days I like the connected aircraft carrier better and better. If hit in battle, big chance one only need to replace 50% to be on full strength again. It could decrease “operational” costs in the end. Of course the principle can be used for other large vessels too.

3) Disaster relief
Hospital vessels that can be “small first aid” of just “bed” boats that connect and grow and eventually include special facilities when needed. These could customize aid on demand e.g. for earthquake areas.

A small number of small “strip-ships” can construct an airstrip on demand, as the first boats arrive an emergency strip is available with minimal facilities and as more strip-ships arrive a “larger” airport can be created. In fact a whole city …

After the emergency period the floating facilities can be scaled down gradually.

4) Submarines
Submarines could start as head-tail only and extend in the middle with segments (Lets call them sub-sets 🙂 Instead of connecting modules in a shipyard, why not connect them under water. No law in nature forbids it…

5) Containerships
Imagine an large containership that can split up in a number of smaller ships. These smaller ships can enter smaller harbours far more easily (or even at all). Also a large containership could split up before going through the suez or panama canal.

My thanks to Rob for his continuing interest and creativity. If you’d like to write a guest post or contribute to IOTD in any way, do please get in touch via the Hire Me link, above.
Cheers,
Patrick

#2498: Adrenalink

I’m no fan of adrenaline. I like to feel in control and develop skills.

Nonetheless, today’s invention is for people who like to live on the edge.

Imagine a roller coaster which has, at its simplest, sections which are on rails and which can slide between locations. In the image, the pale blue section can slide between the fixed green and red sections of track.

This would provide ride customers (in the black carriage) with the belief that they were speeding towards a gap. Just as they get there, B moves quickly to join A -and the ride occupants are then speeding towards another gap.

The motion of the blue section, whilst carrying the carriage, could be made fast and erratic, so that riders would find it hard to predict whether they would smoothly join up with the red section.

These breaks in the track could be mirrored by sudden disconnections between sections of the cars themselves, so that some would unexpectedly be left on a retreating section of track, whilst other cars proceeded as normal.

Every time someone goes on this ride, their experience could thus be made very different.

#2495: Brakefast

When you pay attention to your food, you tend to enjoy it more -and eat less.

Today’s invention aims to help people who want to lose weight by encouraging them to eat more slowly (and thus, I hope, more mindfully.

A translucent lid can be attached to any plate using a suction cup at its centre (grey) (You obviously have to avoid placing food at the very centre of the plate).

This suction cup incorporates a small clockwork motor which rotates the lid about the centre of the plate. The lid has a missing segment which allows access to only a part of the food at a time, so that it can be eaten more gradually than usual.

The time taken to rotate the disc through 360 degrees can be set by the user.

(Damn, I just remembered this, although it’s less clear than today’s idea. Back to the drawing board).

#2494: PooPod

If you like to record images of yourself undertaking some exciting activity…like driving down a country road, then you will be faced with the problem of how to avoid having your precious camera stolen or contaminated when you set it up by the roadside (There is a sub-class of Homo Sapiens, now, that thinks it’s ok to parcel their animal waste and eg hang it from a tree).

Today’s invention is a housing which keeps your camera spotless and invulnerable to theft.

It consists of an opaque dog ‘poo’ bag. Insert the camera (eg this one) so that the handles are knotted around the lens, leaving its field of view clear. You might choose to add some plasticene to the bag for added realism. This can also act as a base to help stabilise and orientate the camera. You can press the bag into the plasticene, so that any rustling of the bag is minimised on the soundtrack.

Place the device pointing at your forthcoming heroic activity. It will be indistinguishable from all the other items of litter lying about, except for the fact that even ardent litter pickers will leave it alone.

Your camera will thus still be there when you return to collect it and with it, your precious footage.

#2493: HedgeHelmet

I spend a few hours a week running; a fair part of which is on suburban pavements. Householders, it seems, don’t take hedge cutting very seriously which means that people in wheelchairs or pushchairs can frequently be forced out onto the road because of bulging masses of privet.

This affects me most when I’m running with our dog on-lead and I therefore have to try to stay right away from traffic.

Today’s invention is a way to deal with bulging hedges, preferably before they make the pavement impassable.

A cycle helmet is fitted with several bladed units on each side. The blades are mounted using zip ties passed through the conduits shown and the vents in the helmet. As you run by a hedge, you can stick your head against it and trim it back rather effectively. The bladed units stand off the helmet surface to allow thin sprigs of hedge to pass into the blade recess and be snipped off

This leaves the hedge in a bit of a mess and the pavement does get covered in clippings. Both of these effects should alert the hedge owner to act on their responsibilities.

I imagine that the bladed units could also be worn on the upper and forearms to add an extra scything action.

#2492: Apparentime

Humans seem to be unsettled by discontinuous time changes when travelling between continents. Today’s invention is a watch which automatically alters the rate at which it runs.

If you leave Melbourne, for example, at 4pm and arrive in Edinburgh at 06.30 that’s 14.5 apparent hours spent on a 23-hour journey. The watch would run 63% as fast as normal, providing the user with linear time progression on the watch.

It’s probably a good idea not to have a second hand, since we can easily perceive that this is moving rather slowly, but the lag in the minutes and hour hands would just appear to be the normal symptoms of impatience.

Once the (smart) device knows your flight number, it can slightly adjust its rate, taking into account any realtime updates, such as delays.

I did a quick analysis of flying from London and the only destination which would give serious perceptual difficulty is Seattle, which requires that your watch moves 9 times slower than usual (Vancouver has a factor of 5, which is I think on the edge of acceptable). I’ve found it hard to find references that say eg we start to notice that something is wrong with a timepiece when it moves faster or slower than a certain amount. Here is an article which makes it clear that this level is heavily dependent on context.

It may be that these apparent time dilation factors serve as a measure of expected jet lag…perhaps airlines should be giving discounts for flights with high factors?

As often happens with these ideas, I’ve just had another one on this theme. Imagine a smartwatch which can tell when you are looking at the time. When you aren’t, it displays nothing. When you suddenly inspect the face, the watch works out what the linear time should be and shows you that, as above…but now, it displays hands moving at the correct rates for a watch…so you don’t get the feeling that anything is amiss. You look away and the display switches off.

#2491: Sidewiper

Hmm…not at all sure about this one. Today’s invention is intended to be a slipstream-powered wiper for the side windows of vehicles.

In practice, the lower half of this device would be shielded in a semicircular housing made of transparent plastic, to ensure that the rotation was continuous and unidirectional.

#2490: Wheelie bench

Today’s invention is intended to make extra use of the enormous wheelie bins, which householders are now often required to accommodate, as supports for a workshop bench. Each house will usually have three or four of these bins: one for general refuse, one for garden waste and one for materials recycling.

The idea is for each home to make more effective use of the space occupied as well as to help recycle a kitchen worktop, of which there are large numbers currently sent to landfill.

The worktop would have a couple of ports cut through it and these would be positioned over the bins so that waste could still be placed inside them -including any eg sawdust created during the future bench work.

The worktop would have some low cost clamps attached so that it could be held firmly in place over the bins (with their lids open). These bins are surprisingly stable and the clamps would add to that.

On bin days, one bin would be quickly unclamped and a different bin inserted. If you objected to the smell of the rubbish, then the ports could each have a crude plug (made from the extracted section of worktop).