Home Posts tagged "sport" (Page 2)

Tag: sport

#1282: Remotivation

Today’s invention is a combination of social networking and exercise technology.

It consists of a regular gps running device with a phone built in. When running in a big event, information about your distance and heartbeat is automatically provided to your Twitter followers (especially tagged eg #exhortation if the readings indicate that you were flagging or in distress).

The followers can then tweet replies which are text-to-speech-ed, via a small loudspeaker, so that you can hear their words of support.

#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.

#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.

#1267: Skinsaver

I know a lot about blisters, having just bought a pair of these.

Today’s invention is a form of protection for blisters. It consists of a collection of felt cylinders (blue), supplied as a column with each cylinder joined to the next using a small cord.

The cylinders have an adhesive underside allowing them to be applied around the blister (whatever its size) as shown.

This creates a support ring which minimises the pressure on the blister while it heals. The support in turn minimises the tendency for the blister to be squeezed so that even more outer skin is painfully separated from the inner layers.

#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.

#1245: Heavyhitter

I know almost nothing about the sport of Baseball (apart from the fact that it seems a lot more engaging than cricket or golf).

Undaunted by ignorance, today’s invention is an adaptation to the baseball bat.

This consists of several microphones embedded in the bat surface. When they sense that a ball is nearing for a hit, they cause a weight to be driven axially within the body so that the impact point becomes the centre of percussion. (The weight movement might be effected by eg compressed air).

This allows every impact to occur on a new, specially engineered ‘sweet-spot’.

Even if it doesn’t conform to the rules of competition, it might be useful to novice players, removing the jarring and pain caused by hitting the ball with the wrong part of the bat in training.