Invention: Hot-air plane

29 November 2005


Hot-air plane





During the day, sunlight will be used to heat a mix of lithium and lithium hydride and a moving parabolic mirror will keep track of the Sun to focus its rays on the thermal store. While the Sun’s rays will provide heat for the engine’s gas, the cold air outside the plane will provide an ideal way of lowering its temperature.

Read the hot-air plane patent here.

Cave mapping




Read the cave mapping patent here

Smarter surveillance

Surveillance cameras often capture only a blurred mug shot of a suspect, either because they are moving or because the camera is not focused correctly.

But IBM has developed a solution. Instead of using a single camera to monitor a scene, IBM has patented a system that uses several cameras at once.

The idea is that a fixed camera takes a series of shots of a person, enabling a computer to then calculate their direction and speed of motion. This information will then be used to make movable cameras follow the target’s path, enabling them to focus accurately. The result should be crystal clear pictures, no matter how fast the subject is moving and should also be able to follow more than one target.

The system may be good for more than security surveillance too. IBM reckons it could also be used at airports to rapidly identify passengers standing in line, if combined with face recognition software.

Read about the smarter surveillance patent here.

Read previous Invention columns:

Landmine arrows,
