Home Posts tagged "safety" (Page 5)

Tag: safety

#1251: HandHoldall

I have noticed that schoolchildren are carrying ever increasing amounts of stuff with them (especially books, despite the one-laptop-per-child initiative). This can’t be good for a developing skeleton.

Today’s invention is therefore a schoolbag which has a handle hinged at one end. The handle requires that its sides be pressed together before the bag is lifted, in order to judge the strength of the user.

When next the bag is set down (detected by sensors within the base), the handle determines whether the bag has been carried for long enough to endanger the user’s joints. If so, the handle de-hinges for a preset period to give the user some time to recover.

The handle can also detect which hand is being used to lift the bag (by the relative pressure on each side) and thus can also encourage a change from left to right (by leaving the hinge open until the hand is changed).

Two such bags could even communicate wirelessly -to ensure eg that nearly equal loads had been placed in each.

#1244: Spacears

In space, no-one can hear you scream…so today’s invention is 3-D hearing for spacewalkers.

The number of people who work in the near vacuum of space is set to increase. These people hear only radio transmissions, the sounds of their suits and their own physiology.

First, equip each spacewalker’s helmet with stereo headphones. All astronauts, and anything movable, would be fitted with a small transmitter sending out a chirp of radio every second or so. These transmissions would be unique to the source person or object.

A processor aboard the Astro’s helmet would receive these and translate them into characteristic, realistic noises in stereo (an approach from the seven o’clock position by a friend or a passing robot arm could be perceived in advance, thus boosting safety and general ‘situation awareness’.

Toolboxes drifting off would soon be detected by their simulated wooshing into the distance as well as an occasional plaintive cry of ‘help’.

The headphones would also drown out one’s stomach rumblings when it’s time for that dehydrated stew, again.

#1242: StepStore

Today’s invention is a way to improve the use of storage space in both homes and offices.

Shown in filing cabinet form, but adaptable to other types of furniture, it consists of drawers which are deep enough to provide access to other drawers which extend almost to ceiling height.

Each drawer is fitted with an internal step enabling a kind of staircase and the whole cabinet is bolted to the wall to limit any tendency to toppling.

#1237: Choppercropper

When you learn to parachute jump, they teach you to perform a special landing technique called a PLF. This is intended to provide a more gradual and thus less jarring impact with terra all too firma.

Today’s invention is to orient a crashing helicopter in such a way that the tail rotor arm hits the ground first, absorbing a lot of the kinetic energy as gradual, gross plastic deformation of this region.

This reorientation could be achieved by eg having small wings extend explosively from the sides of the tail boom at the moment when the main rotor was sensed to have failed.

The tail could be designed to be internally like an automotive crush zone and also potentially angled much less upwards from the horizontal than normal.

This would allow the cabin to avoid auguring in by having its untimely descent slowed (a bit like a factory chimney demolished by the legendary Fred Dinbah).

#1235: FlightDeck

I read recently about how fighter planes are frequently scrambled in response to the use of certain words in transmissions from planes. Words like “bomb” and “hijack”.

The fighters are supposed to deflect an aerial attack by first making rude gestures at some incoming plane, followed after a decent interval, by shooting it down (presumably so that it crashes somewhere less publicity-worthy -ie anywhere that isn’t London).

Today’s invention attempts to avert this disaster. In the event that an airliner was suspected of being used in an attack, a special aircraft would be launched from the nearest airport.

This would be effectively a flying bombproof runway or deck. The deck plane would approach from underneath and behind (invisible from inside the captive aircraft).

It would activate the engine cutoff valves, causing the plane to settle onto the deck and be held in place by clamps on the wings. The captive plane could be boarded by special forces and the combined craft landed somewhere discreet very rapidly.

#1232: Minedmilk

Today’s invention is the latest weapon in the communal-fridge wars.

To stop people stealing one’s (personal) milk, insert a plastic device which consists of a number of yellowish globules linked by a few strands of fishing line. The globules float near the surface and the lines are almost invisible.

This gives the impression, when viewed through the bottle wall or neck, of milk substantially past its use-by and thus deters all but the most desperate kleptolactics.

This device is sterilisable between uses and easily placed in a bottle but won’t pour into one’s cup every time the milk is used.

#1231: Incendascent

Glider pilots won’t hear tell of carrying any kind of motor aboard their craft which might be used to save them in an emergency (a parachute is just about acceptable among engineless aviators).

I talked yesterday to a gliding enthusiast and she mentioned that when trying to find a landing site, she will routinely seek out any sources of warmth on the ground, as even the sun-warmed wall of a hut can provide a lifesaving updraught.

Today’s invention is a magazine of high intensity flares which are dropped on the ground when a glider pilot runs out of lift sources and landing sites.

The pilot flies in a circle and and drops the flares at intervals. These have a brightly coloured casing and when returned to the owner, provide the retriever with a payment. They have an insulated base so that heat can escape only upwards.

On a second circuit, this time over the flares, the glider picks up enough altitude to hedgehop home.

#1230: CooledTool

Machine-assembled glazing units are inherently hard to break through -even when one is fortified by adrenalin in an emergency.

Today’s invention is an update to the standard glass-breaking escape hammer often found on public transport.

It takes the form of a conventional hammer, modified by the inclusion of a small, very high-pressure gas cylinder. When the hammer impacts the window surface, this breaks a seal on the cylinder allowing the gas to rush out. This expansion can be arranged to be sufficiently energetic that the glass surface becomes rapidly cooled locally and therefore embrittled.

This in turn allows the hammer to penetrate the window much more easily (a similar system might be used instead of detonator cord in the canopies of fighter jets with ejector seats).

#1222: Bottleblunter

I sometimes see young men who have been facially disfigured in a brawl with someone using a broken bottle or glass. This is a problem significant enough for pint glasses themselves to have been redesigned.

Today’s invention is a simple device to be used in pubs. Before a bottle is de-capped and handed to a customer, the bartender inserts it into a circular aperture and turns it through 360 degrees.

This aperture contains a small diamond glass cutter which scores around the neck of any bottle, 30mm from the cap.

It’s exceptionally difficult to break any bottle cleanly, so the effect that this scoring will have is that the bottle, held by the neck, will snap, when it is struck on a table top to make a weapon, in such a way that the potential attacker is left holding a very short, painfully jagged piece of glass.

Not only is this hard to hold and therefore pretty useless as a weapon, it also makes them look rather ridiculous.

#1219: Segmentyre

Today’s invention is a new form of tyre which can be changed without removing any wheels and jacking up a couple of tonnes of steel.

It is in the form of a number of rubber compartments, each with a metal foot bonded on. These feet are slotted axially into a hub, as show, by slightly deflating the adjacent segments using the valve which each incorporates.

Repressurisation allows the whole tyre to be used rapidly…there is no longer any need to carry a giant spare tyre…a couple of extra segments should suffice.