Home Posts tagged "safety" (Page 4)

Tag: safety

#1274: AirPads

Given the enormous cost of buying soccer players and their hypersensitivity to injury, I’m surprised to find nothing like today’s invention in the patent databases (although there are 750,000 applications still waiting to be examined at USPTO, so it may already have been applied for).

Shin pads with automobile-like airbags which inflate explosively on impact.

It’s true that these would occasionally inflate when the ball was miskicked and they might cause opposing players’ legs to spring apart violently on impact, but since everyone would be wearing these, and the amplitude of inflation would be small, the protection would be shared.

Once one’s pads had fired, they would be quickly replaced from the sidelines with a new pair.

#1273: BackFire

One of the arguments for allowing people to keep handguns is that these are needed for home defence purposes. There are (usually) legal limits, however, to what a householder can do to defend themselves and their property.

One of the common indicators to a court of an appropriate defensive response to being attacked is when the self-defender can prove that they tried their best to get away and avoid physical violence.

Today’s invention is a low-velocity handgun round for home defence purposes. As well as a reduced charge, each such round contains a small accelerometer sealed inside. This will only allow a bullet to be fired if it has first been moving in a backwards direction for some prespecified interval.

Such bullets are therefore very difficult to use in any attack, so that anyone attempting to buy the ordinary sort can be identified as having some kind of offensive behaviour in mind (without limiting anyone’s legal rights to carry weapons).

#1272: PedalPad

A friend of mine recently cycled 81 miles in a race. The vibration through the seat was so prolonged and intense that he was doubtful about fathering any additional children (for an hour or so post-race, anyway).

Bicycle saddle designers have attempted to deal with this problem by creating all sorts of slots in seats, gel packs etc.

Instead, today’s invention takes the form of a frontal pelvis pad which a rider straps to himself before getting on a bike with no saddle at all. The pad is held in place using a strap under the buttocks, but nothing goes near one’s pudendum.

The pad has a stub rigidly attached which engages with a slot on an upwardly-curved crossbar. This allows a cyclist to stand up on the pedals as usual but when later he wants to sit down, his weight is instead supported by leaning forwards and down on the pad (as well as some tension in the strap).

If the cycle crashes, the stub disconnects from the slot just as his feet disconnect from the pedals.

#1271: TiltTurn

I’m sick of hearing how the g forces on racing drivers require them to spend six hours lifting weights with their necks every day before selling some more after-shave and watches (and that they still have to strap their helmets to the vehicles during races, just to get around corners).

Today’s invention is a gimbaled driver’s seat which rotates during high speed cornering, so that a driver’s body is more closely aligned with the direction of centripetal acceleration, thus lessening any asymmetrical stresses and allowing safer cornering.

#1269: BitStop

Thinking about electric vehicles and mechanisms for swapping batteries, the idea took off in my head that existing methods of supplying fuels to vehicles are fairly primitive.

Instead of pumping petroleum-type fuel as a continuous stream, why not provide it in discrete units?

Today’s invention is a vending machine for standard-sized jerrycans of fuel. Users can find these located on the edge of town. They roll up, exchange a used can for a new one using their credit card inserted in a slot in the machine. (If their current can isn’t quite empty, they get a credit for the weighed remains, which are automatically pooled within in the machine to fill other cans. These amounts eventually amount to a whole ‘free’ unit of fuel).

The can is then stabbed into a connector on board their vehicle. The refuelling time could be under one minute. Once a week, say, a van arrives and replaces a whole machine with one full of new cans.

This has the added benefit that the fuel is kept sealed away from people. It’s also available in smaller, safer amounts, supported by many fewer staff, more locally and with less high-street queueing/disruption.

#1264: Seatsaver

When sitting on a straight-backed chair I have a tendency to rock backwards on the back pair of legs. This pretty quickly breaks the structure of even the strongest seat.

Today’s invention is a pair of skids which attach firmly to the feet of such a chair. These have a slippery underside which makes it hard not to just slide backwards if one begins to lean backwards.

Even on a super-frictional floor, the horizontal extensions make it almost impossible to rock the chair onto either its front or back pair of legs -thus protecting it from the kind of inadvertent damage which I have visited on many fine items of furniture.

This also saves the user from the embarrassment and potential danger of actually falling over backwards.

#1262: SignalSip

Energy drinks apparently start to help one’s muscles work as soon as they make contact with the tongue.

That weird finding, via which the receptors of the tongue somehow inform one’s flagging muscles that ‘help is coming’, is the basis of today’s invention.

For those who find their lives threatened by exhaustion (such as soldiers, explorers or firefighters) it takes the form of a steel water bottle with a lockable lid (and an inaccessible, recessed valve).

The lid contains a timer device which opens a spout for say one second every half-hour (as determined for the operation concerned). This allows someone to take very short slurps of the sugar water inside, enabling them to keep going whilst preventing them from simply draining the contents.

It might even be possible for a version of the bottle to open the spout in response to radio signals from base, in order to maximise the chance that the bottle carrier can get him/herself back home in one piece.

#1260: Divertrack

What happens when a runaway train is careering down the track into the path of an oncoming engine?

Derailers are devices which can be carried to a place on a track and installed so as to protect eg people working in the vicinity. If a train approaches without warning it is automatically derailed (usually onto a fairly safe, flat patch of ground).

Today’s invention is a derailer which is carried by trains themselves and which, in the event of an impending crash, is rapidly lowered into place to allow the train to leave the track.

It takes the form of a pair of curved rail sections normally carried above an engine and hinged so as to be able to drop down in front of the engine’s front wheels rapidly and detach from the vehicle.

These could be made of some comparatively expensive but lightweight material and be long enough to direct the engine off the track, whilst leaving the rear section still on the rails.

#1258: LapStrap

Laptops are equipped with all manner of software-based security measures but that doesn’t count for a lot if someone can jab in a USB device eg and boot up your machine (If your BIOS isn’t password protected, for example).

Today’s invention is a simple device to make any such access to physical connections very much more difficult.

The diagram shows a plug placed in eg a USB socket and attached to a strap which passes under the machine and into a clamp fitted to the other side.

The strap can be locked in place, making attachment of any peripherals impossible without doing serious damage to the device or the machine.

#1253: CarrierBarrier

For all the clever electronic systems on board, naval ships are still vulnerable to attack by torpedo and by small, fast boats.

Aircraft carriers in particular have a turning circle the size of the equator. Today’s invention is intended to help such large ships resist attacks.

It consists of a mobile palette which can be rolled into position to secure a jet plane rigidly to the deck of a carrier. In the event of an attack, palettes would rapidly swarm under parked planes, turn them to align axially with the direction of approaching threat and fire up their engines.

Given the massive power output of a deckload of jets, this would cause the vessel to roll severely. Firing of the engines several times in synchrony with the roll rate would produce waves of huge amplitude -big enough to sink or deflect many forms of near-surface attack.