Tag: fabby

Existing wing mirrors are ugly, hard to adjust, aerodynamically bad news -and they cost the earth when sideswiped by some white van in the 3:30 pub rush.

Today’s invention is to use a UAV, a small remote-controlled helicopter, which could carry a mirror and webcam and relay images direct to the driver. This could be stabilised against vibration and even zoom in on suspected trouble spots ahead. No more dangerous blindspots or invisible dips in the road.

When you want to park, the mirrorbot would help guide you in and then dock itself safely within the vehicle bodywork.

Its a cliché of course that Inventors find themselves, when not in search of perpetual motion or antigravity, looking to build a better mousetrap. On this general theme, Rattus Norvegicus makes the mistake of attempting to dine at the expense of Homo Sapiens -to literally eat our lunch. The United States has an estimated 1.25 billion rats, causing at least US$19 billion dollars worth of damage each year (there are ten rats born for every Human).

There is therefore a need to 1) attract, 2) ‘neutralise’ the rat, 3) clear the trap and 4) reset the process. We’d want to ensure, for reasons of both ethics and effectiveness, that every animal was swiftly killed and not just disabled. Similarly, we need to avoid having animals crawl off and die elsewhere, causing a serious bad smell.

Today’s invention is to place some bait at the top of a hollow pole. Air currents waft the delicious aroma to ground level. The rat climbs up the inside of the pole (which has a textured interior), eventually reaching the baited platform at the top, which is held in place by a magnetic catch. Once the rat’s weight overcomes this support force, the platform suddenly flips through 180degrees, dumping the rat onto a hard, sloped surface on the ground which also deflects the bodies into a waiting hopper. To ensure fatality, this would need a 10m tall pole (based on a simple energy-to-kill criterion), but it could be disguised as a flagpole and located in a fenced-off corner of any infested premises.

(A version of this idea first appeared here.)

Wherever there are crowds, there is the danger of crush-related injuries. Today’s invention is a simple and low cost way to reduce this problem.

In public spaces a tall, cylindrical dispenser would be provided with a smash-to-open aperture at a convenient height. In the event that people were being squeezed by overcrowding in such a space, sections of thick-walled pipe could be quickly extracted by anyone within reach (each perhaps 20cm in diameter and 30 cm long).

These would be rolled and kicked along the ground between the legs of the unfortunate crowd members, allowing a sub population of people to stand on them and lever their heads and shoulders clear of the others. This reduction in pressure between people would ease conditions for everyone and avert the immediate danger of suffocation, trampling and crush injury, until a way to disperse the crowd was achieved.

I find the properties of coffee grounds fascinating (beyond the normal effects of three double espressos). Whole books have been written about the odd rheology of this soft, yet abrasive powder. I was recently playing with an evacuated foil packet of coffee and it occurred to me that it had incredible strength for its weight (caused by the particles being jammed together by the sucked-in skin of the foil).

Today’s invention exploits this property. An example application would be to create a bicycle frame using a single fattish inner tube filled with a coffee-like particulate material (and air). The cycle parts would be loosely attached to this tube to begin with so that the frame could be bent over on itself: a foldaway bicycle.

Now, straighten out the frame tube and evacuate the air (using a variant on a standard bike pump). The frame immediately can be made to rigidify…stabilising the relative positions of the wheels, bars, pedals etc enough to allow the device to be ridden away.

Having a family with a predisposition towards travel sickness is often a problem. I’d like a journey planner which could not only find me the shortest path between A and B, or avoid toll roads, but could also indicate the route which was least likely to require me to hose out the car later.

Today’s invention is a simple algorithm which can be used to calculate a value for the nausea potential of any road journey. Conventional online road planners already assign a value for sensible speed to any point on a journey. Using this value of local speed, it’s easy to calculate the accelerative forces (‘g’) on passengers, which I believe are what cause the illness.

I assume that experiencing a high ‘g’ force for a longer time causes a proportional increase in sickness. At any point on the road for which the speed v is known, the instantaneous queasiness index q is given by v/r (where r is the radius of curvature of the road at any point). Totalling this along the length of a number of candidate routes would allow the least unpleasant travel experience to be selected (the one with smallest total q).

This approach might be easily be extended to include g forces associated with driving up and down hills.

In view of the fact that every homeowner within earshot of an airport is dead set against any additional runways or extensions being built, today’s invention offers a simple alternative.

If quite substantial aeroplanes can take off, using a steam catapult, from the deck of an aircraft carrier, then surely a similar arrangement could be used for civil airliners? This would allow runways to be made less than half current size. A ground-based catapult system, using a shallow ramp, could be made extremely powerful and might allow the aircraft’s engine load at take-off to be much reduced (cutting fuel mass to be carried and also the enormous noise of getting airborne).

An arrestor hook mechanism would be needed for landing, but at least the technology is well-established and surprisingly reliable.