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Tag: inventions

  • Car Seats By Volvo May Be The Most Amazing Thing Ever

    Sometimes a company comes along with a concept or idea that is so absolutely amazing and yet surprisingly simplistic, you wonder why in the heck we’re just now getting it.

    This is the best description of Volvo’s take on the car seat.

    That’s right the car seat—that clunky piece of plastic that is meant to keep your kid safe, but is otherwise a cumbersome pain in the rear.

    Volvo‘s version of the rear-facing car seat is a jaw-dropping affair when compared to today’s standard models.

    It almost makes one want to run out and have children just to have an excuse to use it.

    Almost.

    The Volvo car seat looks like it will be a lot of fun for parents and kids alike:

    Volvo’s unique concept involves a car seat that can be inflated and deflated with the press of a button.

    The item inflates or deflates in about forty seconds. Once deflated, it folds neatly enough to be carried around in a simple backpack.

    The item is easy to store and can be carried around discreetly. When a parent is ready to use it, they can have their child buckled in within the span of about a minute.

    With the Volvo prototype being so simplistic, some expect that the design will prove lightweight.

    In actuality, the car seat is meant to be rather sturdy.

    The fabric is made to withstand high internal pressure due to its military origin.

    Originally the fabric was made as part of an “inflatable plane” concept. While the plane prototype never worked out, the material is currently a staple of the boating industry.

    The fabric of the car seat is thought capable of withstanding serious damage. All this while being able to fit into certain over-sized handbags.

    Power and convenience? Yes, please!

    There is no word as to when this concept car seat will be available for purchase, but the prototype has generated a lot of buzz on the internet.

    Image via Volvo Car SA, Twitter

  • Toilet Of The Future Brings A Flush Of Excitement

    Despite assuming “The Thinker” position at least a couple times a day, the average person probably rarely ponders that our toilets signal how far we’ve come as a species. Our nearest relations in the animal world fling their feces at each other. Meanwhile, we are meticulously planning for the toilets of tomorrow.

    There are a few notable designs that have stood out from the rest.

    The “wellbeing toilet” is a prototype that was designed as part of a contest put on by Dyno-Rod Drains. The idea was to create a toilet that would both improve the health of humans and be good for the environment. Sam Sheard, Pierre Papet, and Victor Johansson of University of Arts London won with their simplistic design. The model would be an improvement over the more traditional “sitting” toilets found in the Western hemisphere. It turns out they are designed completely wrong for the purpose they were made for. Additionally, the wellbeing toilet would be designed to analyze your body’s waste to decipher your current health.

    It sounds like a winner, but before dubbing this potential toilet heir apparent to the ivory throne, there are some other prototypes that could be very popular one day.

    The Kohler Numi will likely be the potty of choice among the elite. It can warm your feet and can lift or lower the seat automatically based on motion-detection technology. If you happen to have $6,400 lying around, you can take elegantly stylish craps in your uber modern mansion.

    TOTO means business when it comes to toilets, having already released a model that is Wifi enabled and capable of reading urine samples. At this rate, future models will come with virtual reality video games that allow you to pretend you are a race car driver or WWII pilot. And no one will ever leave the bathroom or accomplish anything.

    Whatever the choice toilet of the future looks like, one can only hope it’s ergonomic, technologically savvy….and self-cleaning.

    Image: Wikimedia Commons

  • This Smart Trash Can Makes Sure You Never Miss A Basket Again

    There’s something inherently fun about trying to throw wads of paper into a trash can from across the room. As kids, we held impromptu trash basketball tournaments to see who was the true master of trashketball. Now one Japanese inventor wants to take all the skill and challenge out of the revered “sport.”

    At the most recent Japan Media Arts Festival, one inventor walked away with an Excellence Award for his smart trash can. It’s basically a trash can on wheels that communicates with a PC connected to Microsoft’s Kinect. The Kinect detects where the trash is, and moves the trash can to catch the object before it hits the ground.

    This technology is being used in trash cans for now, but it has the potential to be used in other applications as well. There’s an increasing need for autonomous objects that can move and react to the world around them. The smart trash can is just one application made possible by the creation of autonomous objects.

    Unfortunately, trash basketball may never be the same again if this takes off around the world. I weep for a generation that doesn’t know the shame of losing a game of trash basketball, and having to pick up all the trash from the floor as punishment.

  • MIT Researchers Create Glare-Free Glass

    MIT Researchers Create Glare-Free Glass

    MIT researchers have created a type of glass that is nearly invisible. MIT News reports that the glass and the process of creating it were described in a paper published by the journal ACS Nano. The paper is titled (get ready) “Nanotextured Silica Surfaces with Robust Super-Hydrophobicity and Omnidirectional Broadband Super-Transmissivity.”

    The abstract to the paper describes the structure of the glass:

    Taking cues from nature, we use tapered conical nanotextures to fabricate the multifunctional surfaces; the slender conical features result in large topographic roughness whilst the axial gradient in the effective refractive index minimizes reflection through adiabatic index-matching between air and the substrate.

    Right. What all this means is that the researchers (Kyoo-Chul Park, Hyungryul J. Choi, Chih-Hao Chang, Robert E. Cohen, Gareth H. McKinley, and George Barbastathis) have created a technique to manufacture a glass textured in such a way that it “virtually eliminates glare.” This means the glass is almost perfectly see-through, something that is hard to even imagine. The researchers state the glass is also anti-fogging and self-cleaning, making it perfect for windows.

    All I can think is that this type of glass is going to cause problems and break noses the world-over. However, a little more thought reveals what the plan undoubtedly is. Glare is really only an issue for the screens we use daily. Unless you are reading this on an e-reader or in the dark, chances are you are contending with glare right now. Glare-free monitors and touchscreen devices just got closer, thanks to these researchers. Also, a fog-free car windshield would save a lot of time on those cold winter mornings. The researchers also mention photovoltaic solar cells as another possible application.

    Check out how water droplets bounce off the surface of the glass in this video provided by MIT News, and leave a comment about how glare-free glass might be useful, other than for bird murder.

    (image by Hyungryul Choi and Kyoo-Chul Park, courtesy of MIT News)

  • Ruthless Alarm Clock Won’t Let You Snooze

    I’ve never been a morning person, and I suspect I never will be. In high school I tended sleep through my alarm clock’s buzzing, so at night before bed I began to devise tortures for sleepy morning-me. I would set the clock ahead to scare myself into thinking I was late. That progressed until my clock was set hours into the future, and I then began to switch the clock every night in an attempt to make morning-me get up to check a different clock. These methods never fully worked, and if I had a little more technical know-how or ambition I might have eventually gone as far as Paul Sammut has and invented a ruthless alarm clock that will not let you sleep through its alarm.

    Sammut is the inventor of the Ramos Clock, an alarm clock that goes over-the-top in waking you up. To turn off the Ramos Clock, you must enter a “defuse code” on a wireless keypad. The “defuse code” could be just a number you have remembered – but that would be too easy. Instead, the Ramos Clock can make the “defuse code” the current date or even a number the clock flashes on its face. I can see my groggy self unplugging the thing, but that wouldn’t help: the Ramos Clock has an internal battery that will keep it running. I’ve never had anger issues, but smashing the clock might be the only option if I’ve forgotten the code. I wouldn’t, though, since the least expensive version of the clock is $200. Here’s Sammut explaining the basics in his commercial for the device:

    Sammut just finished a successful Kickstarter campaign for the Ramos Clock, raising $153,585 and doubling his goal of $75,000. The clocks are now for sale over at his website. The lower-end version with a simple LED clock face is $200, while a higher end model featuring a vintage Soviet-era nixie tube display is $350. Sammut is also willing to craft a custom Ramos Clock out of some rare hardwoods if you are willing to pay $800.

    Did I mention the Ramos Clock talks to you when you are playing around with its settings? I don’t even have one and I loathe the thing for waking me up.

  • Hot Pocket Dispenser Is The Lazy, Hungry Gamer’s Dream Come True

    How many times have you been playing Skyrim and thought “the only thing that would make this better is food?” My personal answer is 100+ times. If you’ve ever thought this, it most likely follows that you’ve wound up making some food. And what’s a good gamer fuel? Hot Pockets, of course.

    But once your molten hot factory-produced meat pastry is ready, another problem arises. In order to eat said device, you have to put down your controller and pause your game.

    Well, not anymore. Thanks to Ben Heck of The Ben Heck Show, you’ll never have to stop playing to eat a Hot Pocket again.

    That’s because he has engineered a Hot Pocket Dispenser that attaches to your Xbox 360 controller. The device allows you to mechanically feed yourself the Hot Pocket while you continue playing your game. It’s sort of like a meat and cheese push-pop.

    Check out the entire invention/construction/demonstration below:

    You’ll never have to grease up your controller with food fingers again.

    [Via Geekosystem]