Invention Of The Day – Page 55 – Just another break-step productions sites site

#2321: MixerMachine

Research has shown that innovation within companies relies on serendipitous meetings between people who don’t normally interact.

We are four times as likely to communicate regularly with someone sitting six feet away from us as we are with someone 60 feet away.

Today’s invention is therefore a new way to engineer many more such meetings, without having to spend $5billion on a fancy new office.

Vending machines would be introduced with free drinks on board (preferably not those loaded with sugar, but caffeine is good).

When you grab a drink, using your identity card, the machine would sometimes provide a second one.

This will have printed on it (within the machine, in response to your card) the face, and a line of introduction to, a colleague in a different part of the company (as well as a map showing their location).

Employees would make their social networking and technical data available to the vending machine network within the business, so as to ensure that similar individuals weren’t being reintroduced to each other.

People would be both obligated and facilitated to walk to that person’s desk and give them the gift of a drink.

All cans would be recycled, since they bear the recipients’ faces.

#2320: Incognauto

If you have a valuable vehicle, parking it on the street is a risk that you may wish to reduce.

Today’s invention might help with that.

It takes the form of a car cover…shaped to look like a larger and much less desirable vehicle than your own.

A driver could enter his or her car design onto a website and be offered a number of different unstealable car profiles guaranteed to fit over the vehicle of value.

The car cover would be inflatable using a remote controlled tyre compressor. This would grip the inner car tightly, retain the correct shape and also keep any unauthorised access to a minimum.

#2319: CamouflAdge

The advertising business is first and foremost about grabbing attention.

Whether on- or off-line, this has some downsides for the products concerned.

Ads which are plastered everywhere lose their impact and I sense that people are beginning to dislike the fact that their environment is choked with maximum-colour, maximum-contrast, maximum-area selling messages.

Today’s invention is an advertisement which is designed to be unobtrusive and even calming. Billboards would simply be empty or blank frames. Online banners would be frames containing the page background colour.

Such an ad would say, in smallish letters on the frame, “This ad has been created by XYZ Corp and is intended show respect for our customers by not defacing their visual surroundings.”

#2318: Driverless-on

Today’s invention is a driverless car -for a learner driver.

Since autonomous vehicles are now being licensed for use all over the US, one way to make some use of these is in teaching people to drive.

(I don’t for a moment think that robot vehicles will stop people wanting their own licences).

These vehicles have a fine safety record, thus far: any accidents they have been involved in seem to have resulted from human drivers crashing into them.

So imagine a learner driver free to operate a vehicle on their own. He or she would be accompanied only by an autonomous vehicle system.

This would monitor the condition and location of the vehicle and take control if the driver’s choice of gears, speed, indicators, road position etc was outside the envelope which it would have chosen at that moment.

Repeated out of control situations would result in a smooth, machine driven return home and a detailed report about the errors made.

#2317: IsosceleShield

Today’s invention is an extra defence for vehicles against mines.

Instead of relying on a specially shaped hull design, a screen made of articulated plates would be attached to any vehicle about to be used in a dangerous area.

This would normally be carried flat to the hull base, so that ground clearance was maximised.

When approaching an insecure area, the screen would be deployed from inside the vehicle. The hinges would slide rapidly along heavy-duty slideways and lock into place, forming an extra strong triangulated shield, resistant to blast waves.

These waves would also be channeled axially, so that much of the energy could escape without significantly damaging the vehicle above.

#2316: SteerSpokes

One of the many things about bicycle design which frustrates me is the steering-by-turning-the-front-wheel approach -so 18th Century. It really messes with both the aerodynamics and stability to have a great slab of wheel grinding backwards and forwards under the handlebars.

Instead, imagine if one’s bicycle could be made with spokes with aerofoil sections and variable pitch.

A single spoke is shown on a cycle’s front wheel (which doesn’t turn relative to the frame).

Each spoke, however, can be turned about its leading-edge axis (shown in red) using a set of gears in the hub. This means that a spoke can thus be rotated to an angle of attack independent of the others.

Spokes moving forward on the top half of the wheel could be programmed to eg rotate to the five o’clock position (when viewed from above). This would happen when sensors in the static handlebar detected a pressure increase on the right from the rider’s hands.

In this way, when travelling through the air, the pattern of axial spoke rotation can be used to set up a net sideways force -so that the machine will tilt slightly to one side and change the direction of motion of the entire machine.

#2315: DuoNote

I like postit notes very much but I’m sometimes in need of a way to make an exact copy of the contents of one note.

In the old days, a piece of carbon paper might have sufficed, but it’s pretty messy stuff and the resulting copy quality can be poor.

Today’s invention offers an alternative.

A (ferrous-nibbed) pen is equipped with a thin magnetic disc.

As the pen writes on the top note, so this disc is moved on top of the next one.

A small roller ball (attached to the underside of the disc and impregnated with ink) follows the pen nib and creates a duplicate image on the second note.

#2314: Adverturns

Today’s invention is one of those teletext type scrolling displays which you see on the fronts of some buses.

This would be extended vertically and lengthwise, as indicated, to include information beyond the normal destination name eg adverts/news.

The idea is that, as the bus turns, so the message scrolls relative to the bus -so as to appear constantly at the same angle to a stationary observer.

This would add some novelty but also increase the viewing time which any individual could apply to a given piece of information.

#2313: CharChaps

There are always moves in the fashion industry to introduce new patterns and textures.

Today’s invention enables eg jeans to be branded with a personalised pattern.

A normal electric iron would be fitted with a secondary unit. This would consist of a plate containing slidable squares of asbestos on a grid (in the form of one of these ’15’-type puzzles, but with many more empty spaces). This would allow the user to create a pixellated image of sorts.

Gaps in the grid would cause the hot, stationary iron surface to scorch the material locally, leavng a permanent pattern behind.

A refinement of this might be to use a ‘pin screen‘ device so that pins could make contact (or not) with the hot surface and thus achieve a more detailed brand.

#2312: Doublenses

Today’s invention is a pair of glasses with an extra lens in each leg.

These could be folded over to provide the wearer with a pince-nez offering increased magnification, coloured lenses to help with dyslexia, sunglasses or a set of red and green ones to view 3D imagery.

The secondary lenses would be replaceable, so that many combinations could be used in different applications.