#2175: Wheelwarmer

Racing cars sometimes have to have their tyres pre-heated in specially-designed, electrically-heated covers.

Today’s invention augments that process by using the engine exhaust flow to help warm the rubber.

Each exhaust pipe would have a nozzle, directable by use of a small motor, which could be rotated towards or away from the surface of whichever of the rear tyres it was pointed at.

This system could make use of a small thermal camera to gauge the tyre exterior temperature and then help divert the exhaust flow after the heating had had its effect.

A more advanced version could also warm the front tyres.

#2174: VieuxView

Many of the world’s most beautiful cities still need to have new buildings carefully inserted into central sites.

Every effort is usually made to have construction ‘in-keeping’ with historically-significant acrchitecture.

Today’s invention is a new service, based on a Google Streetview model.

When planning permission for a new building is granted, in an area of urban conservation priority, a robotic camera mounted on a cherry-picker would be taken to the location.

There, it would take enormous numbers of high-resolution photographs of significant buildings in the area from points within and behind the planned development site.

These would be views that would disappear forever after the new building is erected and thus otherwise be lost to future generations.

#2173: ShotShots

Today’s invention is a system intended to make buying drinks in a bar more interesting and less time-consuming.

A group of people would sit at a table with an interactive surface.

When someone wants another drink they type in a pin code and select a drink from a menu which appears beside their glass.

The system knows the exact current position of the glass and authorises one of a number of tubes behind the (unmanned) bar to fire the drink through the air, over the heads of patrons, and into the glass. (Glasses might need to be more like brandy balloons to avoid spillage.)

Given reasonably still air in the room, this could be achieved over distances of perhaps 5m.

Yes, of course some people will move their glasses out of the way and attempt to interpose their mouths.

IOTD is 6 years old

It’s six years ago since I started writing this blog -that’s one invention pretty much every day since then.

To celebrate, I’m selling an ebook which talks a bit about how you might boost your own ideas output and plan to make some money from the process. It’s only £2.95 -download it here.

(The hand-tooled, vellum-bound, illuminated collector’s edition will be a bit more expensive, so I’d go for the 50-page, 2Mb .pdf right now!).

#2172: HandleWash

Today’s invention attempts to deal, again, with the problem of people who refuse to wash their hands on exiting the bathroom.

It takes the form of a circular door handle (orange). This would be made from bacteria-inhibiting plastic.

The handle would be located in a cylindrical housing as shown. Each time the door hinge was moved, the circular handle would rotate within the housing, driven by the three wheels indicated.

A fresh segment of handle would therefore be presented to each new door user.

The housing might also be equipped with additional cleaners, such as a disinfectant spray and air dryer or even a small microwave (in the red box).

#2171: ChoiceChase

Closed captions or subtitles are now applied to enormous numbers of media productions (due partly to legislation which makes it illegal to discriminate against hearing-impaired people).

Companies can even now pay to obtain a real-time profile of the frequency with which their corporate titles are used eg in global news broadcasts.

Today’s invention is an entertainment-related variant on this, to allow better access to a higher fraction of interesting stuff.

A channel hopping viewer could pay to enter a small set of (weighted, personal) keywords online.

When these appeared in the captions for anything on tv or the web, a short burst of that programme or video would play on their screen.

This would enable a new form of media consumption, somewhere between browsing and channel hopping, with the power to choose to stay with anything interesting that appeared.

Naturally, dialogue in adverts would be tailored in attempts to achieve even better targetting via this process.

#2170: DressDe-stress

Today’s invention is for kids who are learning to dress themselves (or even we absent-minded grown-ups).

Shirts and blouses would have a few coloured stitches added to each button and buttonhole.

One button would have eg red thread and its corresponding buttonhole would have a few of the same colour stitches sewn in.

In this way, it would be much less easy to get dressed with buttons and holes misaligned (thus avoiding significant parental distress when having to undo everything and start again, every day for six months).

#2169: Invertibrella

Today’s invention returns to the vexed question of umbrellas which blow inside out.

The solution is simply, let them.

In the diagram an umbrella is shown which has a duplicate set of struts on the outside.

When a gust inverts the umbrella, the user simply detaches the handle, at the blue circle, and reattaches it to the other end of the shaft.

#2168: Safetyre

I spend a fair bit of time walking among mountains (well, ok, biggish hills). I was wondering what I’d do if, say, a co-walker or accompanying dog were to break a leg.

If the weather were bad, running to find or even phoning a rescue team might be futile.

Today’s invention is therefore an emergency system to get hillwalkers home in one piece.

It consists of a solid, but very light foam wheel with an axle which passes through two aluminium, U-section troughs.

Each of these has barbs punched through from exterior to interior so that two saplings or branches can be stamped into the troughs and tightened into place using the integral thumbwheels.

These form the shafts of a makeshift cart which, when fed through eg a rucksack, would allow an injured person to be quickly evacuated from a mountainside by only one other person.

#2167: Sandingwich

Today’s invention is a new form of sanding block.

I hate rubbing down before painting…so boring, yet so necessary.

If you are making some product with a fine surface finish, this preparation is even more important.

Imagine a block made of highly-compressed sandpaper sheets. The top few sheets could be made of ultra fine-grade abrasive particles. Lower layers would be made of progressively coarser ones -giving greater uniformity of the final surface texture.

The glue holding the sheets together would be made in different colours.

This would rub off a little onto the workpiece, so that you would be able to tell where the highspots currently were and also when it was time to swap to a new block.