Stark Hand
Stark Hand
A prosthetic hand that’s as functional as an electronic model—but at a fraction of the cost.
Prosthetic hands typically come in three varieties: purely cosmetic models; hooks and other low-cost mechanical appendages that provide a limited range of motion; and electronic versions that better mimic natural hand movements yet can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Mark Stark’s prosthetic incorporates the best elements of each. Although its minimalist plastic assembly is nearly as light and inexpensive as a common steel hook, it looks and moves like a high-end electronic hand.
Stark, who makes his living designing valves for dryers and other appliances, got into prosthetics in part to help his friend, Dave Vogt, who was born without a left hand. Stark’s creation is electronics-free, but its fingers each have three knuckles (two on the thumb) that bend separately to conform to anything the wearer grasps, including irregularly shaped objects that a hook can’t hold.
Hooks attach to a socket at the end of an amputee’s arm and are operated by a cable that runs up to a shoulder harness. When the wearer shrugs his shoulders, the cable pulls the hook open; when he relaxes, the cable slackens and the hook closes. The Stark Hand screws into the same socket-and-cable system but adds a lever on the palm that connects to five more cables, each running up the back of a finger. A shoulder movement triggers the lever to tug all five fingers open at once, and the individual cables let each finger rebound on its own. Springs in each joint contract until each finger comes to rest on an object, so some fingertips can curl around, say, a wineglass stem while others grasp the cup. The springs exert a level of pressure gentle enough to hold an egg but strong enough that you can lift a chair.
How It Works: The Stark Hand: The prosthetic hand attaches to a cable that runs from a shoulder harness worn by an amputee. A lever on the palm opens all five fingers at once, and separate cables in each finger and springs at each knuckle allow the fingers to close individually and bend around objects with a secure grip.
In 2004, Stark constructed a proof-of-concept from hardware-store supplies and gave it to Vogt to try out. Within an hour, Vogt caught a ball left-handed for the first time in his life. Since then, he has helped Stark test and improve four more prototypes. Stark designed stronger, compact springs, re-engineered the fingers into a few easy-to-manufacture shapes, and set the thumb at a new angle to better replicate a real thumb. He also strengthened the joints in the hand against side impacts after Vogt broke a prosthetic knuckle when he hit something while swinging around on the dance floor.
Vogt now wears the hand everywhere except to his job as a machinist, where he has to do heavy lifting for which a hook still works better. A more durable production version, which will use tougher plastics and sleeker parts, could be on the way as early as this winter. Edison Nation, a company that helps inventors develop their ideas, recently selected Stark’s hand for commercial development and is now in talks to license it to a major prosthetics manufacturer.
Name: The Stark Hand
Inventor: Mark Stark
Time: 7 years
Cost: $17,000–$18,000
Prosthetic hands typically come in three varieties: purely cosmetic models; hooks and other low-cost mechanical appendages that provide a limited range of motion; and electronic versions that better mimic natural hand movements yet can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Mark Stark’s prosthetic incorporates the best elements of each. Although its minimalist plastic assembly is nearly as light and inexpensive as a common steel hook, it looks and moves like a high-end electronic hand.
Stark, who makes his living designing valves for dryers and other appliances, got into prosthetics in part to help his friend, Dave Vogt, who was born without a left hand. Stark’s creation is electronics-free, but its fingers each have three knuckles (two on the thumb) that bend separately to conform to anything the wearer grasps, including irregularly shaped objects that a hook can’t hold.
Hooks attach to a socket at the end of an amputee’s arm and are operated by a cable that runs up to a shoulder harness. When the wearer shrugs his shoulders, the cable pulls the hook open; when he relaxes, the cable slackens and the hook closes. The Stark Hand screws into the same socket-and-cable system but adds a lever on the palm that connects to five more cables, each running up the back of a finger. A shoulder movement triggers the lever to tug all five fingers open at once, and the individual cables let each finger rebound on its own. Springs in each joint contract until each finger comes to rest on an object, so some fingertips can curl around, say, a wineglass stem while others grasp the cup. The springs exert a level of pressure gentle enough to hold an egg but strong enough that you can lift a chair.
How It Works: The Stark Hand: The prosthetic hand attaches to a cable that runs from a shoulder harness worn by an amputee. A lever on the palm opens all five fingers at once, and separate cables in each finger and springs at each knuckle allow the fingers to close individually and bend around objects with a secure grip.
In 2004, Stark constructed a proof-of-concept from hardware-store supplies and gave it to Vogt to try out. Within an hour, Vogt caught a ball left-handed for the first time in his life. Since then, he has helped Stark test and improve four more prototypes. Stark designed stronger, compact springs, re-engineered the fingers into a few easy-to-manufacture shapes, and set the thumb at a new angle to better replicate a real thumb. He also strengthened the joints in the hand against side impacts after Vogt broke a prosthetic knuckle when he hit something while swinging around on the dance floor.
Vogt now wears the hand everywhere except to his job as a machinist, where he has to do heavy lifting for which a hook still works better. A more durable production version, which will use tougher plastics and sleeker parts, could be on the way as early as this winter. Edison Nation, a company that helps inventors develop their ideas, recently selected Stark’s hand for commercial development and is now in talks to license it to a major prosthetics manufacturer.
Name: The Stark Hand
Inventor: Mark Stark
Time: 7 years
Cost: $17,000–$18,000
Armored Glove
Armored Glove
It is equipped with a video camera and a stun gun to keep criminals at bay.
A robber is cornered in a dead-end alley. He turns to face the police officer pursuing him, ready to fight. He pauses. The officer’s left forearm is encased in ballistic nylon, and half a million volts arc menacingly between electrodes on his wrist. A green laser target lands on the robber’s chest. He puts his hands up; it’s a fight he can’t win.
For police and corrections officers, preventing and defusing confrontations can save lives, and that’s the premise behind the BodyGuard.
Equipped with a highvoltage stunner, video camera, laser pointer and flashlight, the armor sleeve is intended to prevent violent situations. The invention was designed by David Brown, a cameraman, editor and producer who makes a living filming musical acts such as Rage Against the Machine and Snoop Dogg, as well as behindthe-scenes movie footage for the actor Kevin Costner, a friend and BodyGuard investor.
Brown developed the concept for the device one evening in 2004, when he and some friends were discussing a recent mountain lion attack in a nearby Orange County park that had left one cyclist dead and another maimed. During an attack like that, Brown recalls thinking, even if you have a knife or other handheld weapon, you’re going to drop it. He wanted something that a person could deploy instinctually
How It Works: Armored Glove: The breathable glove weighs less than three pounds and is encased by a hard shell that extends across the forearm. A pull pin preps the stunner (generated by four electrodes on the wrist), and a button at the palm activates it. Similar buttons trigger the laser pointer, video camera and flashlight. Blanddesigns.co.uk
As he refined the idea, he realized that his natural market was police forces, corrections departments and the military. He made a prototype in 48 hours from a medical arm brace, an off-theshelf stun gun and a fire-alarm button from Home Depot. When Costner saw that early version, he became an active partner. “I could see the application. I could see the deterrent. I could see how it could work,” he says, “and those are the things that get my engine going.”
Seven years and 30 prototypes later, Brown has his first demo model. The components are arranged for ease of use, comfort and to prevent users from stunning themselves. The green laser pointer helps aim a high-definition video camera because, Brown says, a suspect who knows he’s on camera is more likely to cooperate. If the camera doesn’t do the trick, the wrist mounted stunner might. It looks and sounds painful when electricity sizzles between its electrodes, which may encourage an attacker to back off. As a last resort, it may be used to briefly incapacitate a particularly stubborn suspect.
The BodyGuard debuted in May at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Mock Prison Riot, an annual training and technology-assessment event held at a decommissioned penitentiary in West Virginia. The first demo unit will be released to the Los Angeles sheriff’s department later this year. Brown says future incarnations could include chemical sensors, an electronic translator to help soldiers communicate overseas, or biometric readers for airport security guards. “BodyGuard will empower officers worldwide,” Brown says, “and it will save lives."
Name: The BodyGuard
Inventor: David Brown
Time: 7 years
Cost: Undisclosed
A robber is cornered in a dead-end alley. He turns to face the police officer pursuing him, ready to fight. He pauses. The officer’s left forearm is encased in ballistic nylon, and half a million volts arc menacingly between electrodes on his wrist. A green laser target lands on the robber’s chest. He puts his hands up; it’s a fight he can’t win.
For police and corrections officers, preventing and defusing confrontations can save lives, and that’s the premise behind the BodyGuard.
Equipped with a highvoltage stunner, video camera, laser pointer and flashlight, the armor sleeve is intended to prevent violent situations. The invention was designed by David Brown, a cameraman, editor and producer who makes a living filming musical acts such as Rage Against the Machine and Snoop Dogg, as well as behindthe-scenes movie footage for the actor Kevin Costner, a friend and BodyGuard investor.
Brown developed the concept for the device one evening in 2004, when he and some friends were discussing a recent mountain lion attack in a nearby Orange County park that had left one cyclist dead and another maimed. During an attack like that, Brown recalls thinking, even if you have a knife or other handheld weapon, you’re going to drop it. He wanted something that a person could deploy instinctually
How It Works: Armored Glove: The breathable glove weighs less than three pounds and is encased by a hard shell that extends across the forearm. A pull pin preps the stunner (generated by four electrodes on the wrist), and a button at the palm activates it. Similar buttons trigger the laser pointer, video camera and flashlight. Blanddesigns.co.uk
As he refined the idea, he realized that his natural market was police forces, corrections departments and the military. He made a prototype in 48 hours from a medical arm brace, an off-theshelf stun gun and a fire-alarm button from Home Depot. When Costner saw that early version, he became an active partner. “I could see the application. I could see the deterrent. I could see how it could work,” he says, “and those are the things that get my engine going.”
Seven years and 30 prototypes later, Brown has his first demo model. The components are arranged for ease of use, comfort and to prevent users from stunning themselves. The green laser pointer helps aim a high-definition video camera because, Brown says, a suspect who knows he’s on camera is more likely to cooperate. If the camera doesn’t do the trick, the wrist mounted stunner might. It looks and sounds painful when electricity sizzles between its electrodes, which may encourage an attacker to back off. As a last resort, it may be used to briefly incapacitate a particularly stubborn suspect.
The BodyGuard debuted in May at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Mock Prison Riot, an annual training and technology-assessment event held at a decommissioned penitentiary in West Virginia. The first demo unit will be released to the Los Angeles sheriff’s department later this year. Brown says future incarnations could include chemical sensors, an electronic translator to help soldiers communicate overseas, or biometric readers for airport security guards. “BodyGuard will empower officers worldwide,” Brown says, “and it will save lives."
Name: The BodyGuard
Inventor: David Brown
Time: 7 years
Cost: Undisclosed
Kstal Landing Pad
Kstal Landing Pad
Pad enables skiers and snowboarders to pull off tricks safely
Six years ago, Aaron Coret, a 20-year-old engineering student at the University of British Columbia and an aspiring pro snowboarder, launched from a 50-foot jump at Whistler Blackcomb. “I remember coming off the lip of the jump and dropping my shoulder too hard. Right then I knew that I had lost control,” he says. “The second I touched down, I lost feeling in my entire body. I slid 60 feet to the end of the landing and stared up at the sky, wondering what my life is going to be like now that everything had changed.”
Paralyzed from the neck down after crushing two vertebrae, Coret resolved to increase the safety of the sport he loved. For his final project in an engineering course, he teamed with fellow student and snowboarder Stephen Slen to create a safe landing pad for ski and snowboard tricks. Working from the back of a sail-manufacturing shop, they created a 15-by-20-by-5-foot vinyl-and-nylon landing pad that contained two inflatable chambers. The upper chamber was sealed, while the four-foot-high lower chamber had valves that released a controlled amount of air on impact. Unlike most landing pads, which give so much that they envelop the athlete, the prototype remained firm enough to land on and ride off of, but it had enough give to reduce the risk of injury.
How It Works: Landing Pad: When a snowboarder hits the pad’s firm vinyl surface, the lower chamber releases a small amount of air through vents on the sides, ensuring a soft, upright landing without enveloping the rider Blanddesigns.co.uk
To test the invention, Coret and Slen went to the top of the Blackcomb glacier. Still completely unsure if the pad was fit to ride,Slen took a deep breath, sailed off a jump, landed on the pad—and slid down it perfectly. By the end of the year the inventors patented their design, formed a company (Katal Innovations, named for a unit of catalytic activity), and began looking for someone who knew how to build large inflatables. They settled on a company that makes custom bouncy castles.
But the new models didn’t have the amount of give that made the first version safe and rideable. “We had to pull out the old prototype and have our friends jump on it while we analyzed why it was working,” Slen says. It turned out that the pad didn’t dump air the way they had thought. In their field tests, the prototype’s valves had released some air upon inflation, so when a rider jumped on it there was immediately “some cushioning movement,” Coret explains. That slight, unintentional deflation was crucial to the design. To replicate it, the inventors used blowers and vents in the new version to continuously add and release air.
Within a year after Coret and Slen had finished their new models, Canadian officials called the pair to a meeting to ask them to use the Katal pad in the opening ceremony of the Vancouver Winter Olympics. It was a triumphant moment, and in the past year Katal pads have been demoed in Alberta, California and Colorado. “We had it on the mountain for five months, and there was big buzz surrounding it,” says Bryan Rooney, the manager of racing, terrain parks and special events on Vail Mountain, “X Games gold medalists and Olympians were lining up. It is a different animal than other airbags.”
Name:Kstal Landing Pad
Inventors: Aaron Coret and Stephen Slen
Time: 6 years
Cost: Undisclosed
Six years ago, Aaron Coret, a 20-year-old engineering student at the University of British Columbia and an aspiring pro snowboarder, launched from a 50-foot jump at Whistler Blackcomb. “I remember coming off the lip of the jump and dropping my shoulder too hard. Right then I knew that I had lost control,” he says. “The second I touched down, I lost feeling in my entire body. I slid 60 feet to the end of the landing and stared up at the sky, wondering what my life is going to be like now that everything had changed.”
Paralyzed from the neck down after crushing two vertebrae, Coret resolved to increase the safety of the sport he loved. For his final project in an engineering course, he teamed with fellow student and snowboarder Stephen Slen to create a safe landing pad for ski and snowboard tricks. Working from the back of a sail-manufacturing shop, they created a 15-by-20-by-5-foot vinyl-and-nylon landing pad that contained two inflatable chambers. The upper chamber was sealed, while the four-foot-high lower chamber had valves that released a controlled amount of air on impact. Unlike most landing pads, which give so much that they envelop the athlete, the prototype remained firm enough to land on and ride off of, but it had enough give to reduce the risk of injury.
How It Works: Landing Pad: When a snowboarder hits the pad’s firm vinyl surface, the lower chamber releases a small amount of air through vents on the sides, ensuring a soft, upright landing without enveloping the rider Blanddesigns.co.uk
To test the invention, Coret and Slen went to the top of the Blackcomb glacier. Still completely unsure if the pad was fit to ride,Slen took a deep breath, sailed off a jump, landed on the pad—and slid down it perfectly. By the end of the year the inventors patented their design, formed a company (Katal Innovations, named for a unit of catalytic activity), and began looking for someone who knew how to build large inflatables. They settled on a company that makes custom bouncy castles.
But the new models didn’t have the amount of give that made the first version safe and rideable. “We had to pull out the old prototype and have our friends jump on it while we analyzed why it was working,” Slen says. It turned out that the pad didn’t dump air the way they had thought. In their field tests, the prototype’s valves had released some air upon inflation, so when a rider jumped on it there was immediately “some cushioning movement,” Coret explains. That slight, unintentional deflation was crucial to the design. To replicate it, the inventors used blowers and vents in the new version to continuously add and release air.
Within a year after Coret and Slen had finished their new models, Canadian officials called the pair to a meeting to ask them to use the Katal pad in the opening ceremony of the Vancouver Winter Olympics. It was a triumphant moment, and in the past year Katal pads have been demoed in Alberta, California and Colorado. “We had it on the mountain for five months, and there was big buzz surrounding it,” says Bryan Rooney, the manager of racing, terrain parks and special events on Vail Mountain, “X Games gold medalists and Olympians were lining up. It is a different animal than other airbags.”
Name:Kstal Landing Pad
Inventors: Aaron Coret and Stephen Slen
Time: 6 years
Cost: Undisclosed
Bed Bug Detective
Bed Bug Detective
Chris Goggin doesn’t like the title “inventor,” despite the fact that nearly two dozen patents list him as one. He prefers “innovator.” Either way, the Wilmington, North Carolina, mechanical engineer and former product developer — his résumé includes military missile electronics, the George Foreman Spin Fryer, and fuel-tank mechanisms for the F-22 Raptor jet recognizes the need for a new device when he sees one. Two years ago, as more and more people began waking up with itchy, red welts on their body, he realized the world needed a cheap and effective way to detect bedbugs.
The notorious insects, which reemerged in the U.S. about 10 years ago after a 50-year hiatus are extremely difficult to find. They can hide in the folds or cracks of nearly any object. Unlike cockroaches and mice, bedbugs don’t respond to poison-laced baits or bombs. Exterminators must deliver poisons more directly, so pinpointing the insects’ exact location is vital in stamping out an infestation. During a typical inspection, an exterminator may spend up to an hour per room seeking bedbugs out. Goggin’s Bed Bug Detective does the same job in 15 minutes.
The device replicates the way dogs pick up scents, enabling it to sniff out bedbug pheromones, chemicals that insects use to communicate with one another. Dogs’ olfactory system allows them to recognize even the faintest of scents. In recent years, well-trained bedbug-detecting pups have proven their ability to recognize bedbug pheromones with 98 percent accuracy in a controlled study. Goggin’s cocker spaniel, Nina, acted as a model by lending the device her unique “sniff cadence,” the rhythm dogs use to breathe in an odor. The snuffling pulls a scent into the smaller of a dog’s two olfactory chambers; over time, faint aromas build up in the chamber and become recognizable to the animal.
How It Works: Bed Bug Detector: A fan sucks air in through seven small holes in the wand. The air comes into contact with three sensors capable of detecting a bed bug’s unique aromatic signature, a combination of pheromones, CO2 and methane. Software monitors and adjusts the system, and a color display shows when the user is getting closer or farther from the source. Blanddesigns.co.uk
Exterminators in the U.S. currently employ around 200 dogs, a number that’s on the rise. But the training and care for a dog can run a pest-control company between $30,000 and $70,000, according to the National Pest Management Association, a cost that’s generally passed on to the customer. Since training isn’t regulated, some dogs do not learn to find bedbugs adequately. Those that do can locate an infestation to only within a few feet, which still leaves a lot of space that must be searched by hand. Dogs also don’t distinguish between male and female pheromones (egg-laying females pose the highest infestation risk) or sense other signatures such as the insects’ odorless carbon dioxide and methane emissions.
Goggin’s electronic version uses CO2 and methane sensors, as well as a proprietary pheromone detector, to pinpoint bedbugs to within one square inch, from a distance three times as far away as a dog could. The device can also tell the bugs’ sex. The handheld unit will go on sale this year for $200. Goggin says a new model that works for a wider variety of pests, including cockroaches, ants and mice, is on the way.
Name: Bed Bug Detective
Inventor: Chris Goggin
Time: 1.5 years
Cost: $500,000
The notorious insects, which reemerged in the U.S. about 10 years ago after a 50-year hiatus are extremely difficult to find. They can hide in the folds or cracks of nearly any object. Unlike cockroaches and mice, bedbugs don’t respond to poison-laced baits or bombs. Exterminators must deliver poisons more directly, so pinpointing the insects’ exact location is vital in stamping out an infestation. During a typical inspection, an exterminator may spend up to an hour per room seeking bedbugs out. Goggin’s Bed Bug Detective does the same job in 15 minutes.
The device replicates the way dogs pick up scents, enabling it to sniff out bedbug pheromones, chemicals that insects use to communicate with one another. Dogs’ olfactory system allows them to recognize even the faintest of scents. In recent years, well-trained bedbug-detecting pups have proven their ability to recognize bedbug pheromones with 98 percent accuracy in a controlled study. Goggin’s cocker spaniel, Nina, acted as a model by lending the device her unique “sniff cadence,” the rhythm dogs use to breathe in an odor. The snuffling pulls a scent into the smaller of a dog’s two olfactory chambers; over time, faint aromas build up in the chamber and become recognizable to the animal.
How It Works: Bed Bug Detector: A fan sucks air in through seven small holes in the wand. The air comes into contact with three sensors capable of detecting a bed bug’s unique aromatic signature, a combination of pheromones, CO2 and methane. Software monitors and adjusts the system, and a color display shows when the user is getting closer or farther from the source. Blanddesigns.co.uk
Exterminators in the U.S. currently employ around 200 dogs, a number that’s on the rise. But the training and care for a dog can run a pest-control company between $30,000 and $70,000, according to the National Pest Management Association, a cost that’s generally passed on to the customer. Since training isn’t regulated, some dogs do not learn to find bedbugs adequately. Those that do can locate an infestation to only within a few feet, which still leaves a lot of space that must be searched by hand. Dogs also don’t distinguish between male and female pheromones (egg-laying females pose the highest infestation risk) or sense other signatures such as the insects’ odorless carbon dioxide and methane emissions.
Goggin’s electronic version uses CO2 and methane sensors, as well as a proprietary pheromone detector, to pinpoint bedbugs to within one square inch, from a distance three times as far away as a dog could. The device can also tell the bugs’ sex. The handheld unit will go on sale this year for $200. Goggin says a new model that works for a wider variety of pests, including cockroaches, ants and mice, is on the way.
Name: Bed Bug Detective
Inventor: Chris Goggin
Time: 1.5 years
Cost: $500,000
Antenatal Screening Kit
Antenatal Screening Kit
A magic marker that makes screening for prenatal diseases easier and less expensive.
On a February night last year, Sean Monagle got the phone call he’d been waiting two months for: Some 100 urine samples from pregnant women were ready for his analysis. A technician delivered them to his dorm, and Monagle, then a senior at Johns Hopkins University, raced off to his lab. He knew this was his chance to test his potentially lifesaving invention.
Every year, a combined 6.3 million pregnant women and newborns die from pregnancy and childbirth complications. Ninety-nine percent of maternal deaths occur in developing countries where most women receive little, if any, prenatal care. So Monagle, now a graduate student at the university’s Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design—along with his engineering classmates Maxim Budyansky, Sherri Hall, Matthew Means, ShishiraNagesh Mary O’Grady, Peter Truskey and James Waring—designed a pen that can identify prenatal diseases early, accurately and far more costeffectively than other methods.
In the U.S., the most common way for doctors to screen expectant mothers for preeclampsia and related complications is with a 50-cent dipstick. But in developing countries, dipsticks are too expensive for widespread use. With their marker, Monagle and his colleagues created a prenatal test that’s simple enough to be used and interpreted by anyone and costs only a third of a cent per use.
How It Works: Safety Pen: To administer a test, the user draws a line and squeezes a drop of urine on it. Each marker will be color-coded for a different disease. Blanddesigns.co.uk
That night in his lab, Monagle was testing for preeclampsia and related disorders. The condition causes 76,000 maternal and 500,000 infant deaths every year, yet it’s easily treatable if detected early. He drew a yellow line on a piece of filter paper with the pen and squeezed a drop of urine from one of the vials onto the paper. The test strip turned cobalt blue. Chemical reagents he had mixed in the marker’s “ink” (a liquid solution containing a buffer that the students formulated) had reacted with high levels of protein in the urine, a sure sign of preeclampsia.
The students, also including Britni Crocker, Elaine Yang, Ezra Taylor, and ThembiMdluli, are planning to make color-coded kits to screen for several conditions, including diabetes and urinary tract infections. “We can make a significant difference if we don’t wait for women to come to healthcare facilities but rather take some of this lifesaving care to them,” says HarshadSanghvi, the medical director of Jhpiego, the nonprofit organization that challenged Monagle’s class to develop a low-cost prenatal testing tool.
Jhpiego, funded by a $100,000 award from the U.S. Agency for International Development, recently began a study of the marker-based preeclampsia test in Nepal. The results could have wide-reaching benefits, says the agency’s chief innovation officer, Maura O’Neill. “If we are going to make dramatic improvements in health-care delivery, not only in the developing world but in the developed world,” she says, “this is the kind of breakthrough that we’re going to need."
Name: Antenatal Screening Kit
Inventors: Sean Monagle, Maxim Budyansky, Sherri Hall, Matthew Means, ShishiraNagesh, Mary O’Grady, Peter Truskey and James Warin
Time: 3 years
Cost: $20,000
On a February night last year, Sean Monagle got the phone call he’d been waiting two months for: Some 100 urine samples from pregnant women were ready for his analysis. A technician delivered them to his dorm, and Monagle, then a senior at Johns Hopkins University, raced off to his lab. He knew this was his chance to test his potentially lifesaving invention.
Every year, a combined 6.3 million pregnant women and newborns die from pregnancy and childbirth complications. Ninety-nine percent of maternal deaths occur in developing countries where most women receive little, if any, prenatal care. So Monagle, now a graduate student at the university’s Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design—along with his engineering classmates Maxim Budyansky, Sherri Hall, Matthew Means, ShishiraNagesh Mary O’Grady, Peter Truskey and James Waring—designed a pen that can identify prenatal diseases early, accurately and far more costeffectively than other methods.
In the U.S., the most common way for doctors to screen expectant mothers for preeclampsia and related complications is with a 50-cent dipstick. But in developing countries, dipsticks are too expensive for widespread use. With their marker, Monagle and his colleagues created a prenatal test that’s simple enough to be used and interpreted by anyone and costs only a third of a cent per use.
How It Works: Safety Pen: To administer a test, the user draws a line and squeezes a drop of urine on it. Each marker will be color-coded for a different disease. Blanddesigns.co.uk
That night in his lab, Monagle was testing for preeclampsia and related disorders. The condition causes 76,000 maternal and 500,000 infant deaths every year, yet it’s easily treatable if detected early. He drew a yellow line on a piece of filter paper with the pen and squeezed a drop of urine from one of the vials onto the paper. The test strip turned cobalt blue. Chemical reagents he had mixed in the marker’s “ink” (a liquid solution containing a buffer that the students formulated) had reacted with high levels of protein in the urine, a sure sign of preeclampsia.
The students, also including Britni Crocker, Elaine Yang, Ezra Taylor, and ThembiMdluli, are planning to make color-coded kits to screen for several conditions, including diabetes and urinary tract infections. “We can make a significant difference if we don’t wait for women to come to healthcare facilities but rather take some of this lifesaving care to them,” says HarshadSanghvi, the medical director of Jhpiego, the nonprofit organization that challenged Monagle’s class to develop a low-cost prenatal testing tool.
Jhpiego, funded by a $100,000 award from the U.S. Agency for International Development, recently began a study of the marker-based preeclampsia test in Nepal. The results could have wide-reaching benefits, says the agency’s chief innovation officer, Maura O’Neill. “If we are going to make dramatic improvements in health-care delivery, not only in the developing world but in the developed world,” she says, “this is the kind of breakthrough that we’re going to need."
Name: Antenatal Screening Kit
Inventors: Sean Monagle, Maxim Budyansky, Sherri Hall, Matthew Means, ShishiraNagesh, Mary O’Grady, Peter Truskey and James Warin
Time: 3 years
Cost: $20,000
Zero Liquid Discharge
Zero Liquid Discharge
A machine that uses exhaust heat to treat onboard sewage
When NamonNassef had to buy a new engine for his boat, he saw an opportunity. He could finally install the invention he had been working on, a machine he calls the Zero Liquid Discharge Sewage Elimination System (ZLD). The device uses engine heat to oxidize and evaporate toilet, shower and galley waste.
A typical combustion engine makes use of only 30 to 35 percent of the energy contained in fuel; the rest escapes as heat through the radiator or the exhaust. The microwave-oven-size ZLD puts that exhaust heat to work. When a passenger flushes a boat’s toilet or drains the waste-containment tank, the wastewater runs through a pipe to the ZLD, which can be installed anywhere in the craft. First the waste enters the machine’s equalization tank, which grinds it into pieces a quarter of an inch or smaller in diameter. Next it moves to the homogenizer, a container with three sets of blades that dissolve solids into 0.002-inch-diameter particles. Then an injector pump pressurizes the waste stream and sprays it through a nozzle into the engine’s exhaust system as a fine aerosol.
The exhaust of an idling engine is at least 550°F, which is hot enough to flashevaporate the waste and thermally oxidize the organic materials. Quite simply, the device can break down anything organic that’s put into it. The process eliminates all odors, Nassef says, and the main by-products are carbon dioxide and clean water vapor.
How It Works: Zero Liquid Discharge: Waste flows from the boat’s toilet to an equalization tank, which breaks it into small pieces. The material next moves into the homogenizer, a container where it gets chopped into particles. The injector pump pressurizes the material and sprays it through a nozzle into the engine’s exhaust system, where the heat cleans it. Blanddesigns.co.uk
Nassef built a ZLD prototype in 2004 from washing-machine parts and a five-gallon paint bucket. The current version, his 11th update, uses only as much energy as ten 100-watt lightbulbs, sterilizes waste without any of the harsh chemicals of other portable toilet-waste-disposal systems, and can be scaled up or down. In 2007 it earned a certificate of approval from the U.S. Coast Guard for marine sanitation devices.
Nassef is starting with boats, but the ZLD has the potential to work in just about any vehicle with hot-enough exhaust and a toilet. He’s drawn interest from RV manufacturers and the U.S. military, which often resorts to burning waste with jet fuel (at a total cost of $400 per gallon) at its forward operating bases. Another promising market is airlines, which could plug the ZLD into existing toilets, allowing some planes to shed up to 500 pounds of wastewater weight over the course of a flight.
Name: Zero Liquid Discharge
Inventor: NamonNassef
Time: 7 years
Cost: “Hundreds of thousands of dollars"
When NamonNassef had to buy a new engine for his boat, he saw an opportunity. He could finally install the invention he had been working on, a machine he calls the Zero Liquid Discharge Sewage Elimination System (ZLD). The device uses engine heat to oxidize and evaporate toilet, shower and galley waste.
A typical combustion engine makes use of only 30 to 35 percent of the energy contained in fuel; the rest escapes as heat through the radiator or the exhaust. The microwave-oven-size ZLD puts that exhaust heat to work. When a passenger flushes a boat’s toilet or drains the waste-containment tank, the wastewater runs through a pipe to the ZLD, which can be installed anywhere in the craft. First the waste enters the machine’s equalization tank, which grinds it into pieces a quarter of an inch or smaller in diameter. Next it moves to the homogenizer, a container with three sets of blades that dissolve solids into 0.002-inch-diameter particles. Then an injector pump pressurizes the waste stream and sprays it through a nozzle into the engine’s exhaust system as a fine aerosol.
The exhaust of an idling engine is at least 550°F, which is hot enough to flashevaporate the waste and thermally oxidize the organic materials. Quite simply, the device can break down anything organic that’s put into it. The process eliminates all odors, Nassef says, and the main by-products are carbon dioxide and clean water vapor.
How It Works: Zero Liquid Discharge: Waste flows from the boat’s toilet to an equalization tank, which breaks it into small pieces. The material next moves into the homogenizer, a container where it gets chopped into particles. The injector pump pressurizes the material and sprays it through a nozzle into the engine’s exhaust system, where the heat cleans it. Blanddesigns.co.uk
Nassef built a ZLD prototype in 2004 from washing-machine parts and a five-gallon paint bucket. The current version, his 11th update, uses only as much energy as ten 100-watt lightbulbs, sterilizes waste without any of the harsh chemicals of other portable toilet-waste-disposal systems, and can be scaled up or down. In 2007 it earned a certificate of approval from the U.S. Coast Guard for marine sanitation devices.
Nassef is starting with boats, but the ZLD has the potential to work in just about any vehicle with hot-enough exhaust and a toilet. He’s drawn interest from RV manufacturers and the U.S. military, which often resorts to burning waste with jet fuel (at a total cost of $400 per gallon) at its forward operating bases. Another promising market is airlines, which could plug the ZLD into existing toilets, allowing some planes to shed up to 500 pounds of wastewater weight over the course of a flight.
Name: Zero Liquid Discharge
Inventor: NamonNassef
Time: 7 years
Cost: “Hundreds of thousands of dollars"
Kymera Body Board
Kymera Body Board
Zips across lakes and rivers at 25 mph
When Jason Woods was 19 and living on his own for the first time, he decided to buy an old ski boat. The 1969 Sportster was perfect for driving girls around Lake Berryessa, near his home in Napa, California, but after a few months, he found that transporting and storing a 16-foot boat was an expensive hassle. He wanted a craft that he could toss in his car and carry to the water. Unfortunately, no options existed.
So Woods-who, at Napa’s New Technology High School, learned how make his own rockets and build battle-ready robots-came upwith the idea for the Kymera. The concept was a carbon-fiber body board powered by a small engine that would propel a rider at exhilarating speeds while displacing roughly half an inch of water. Vacationers could explore waterways without a boat, and because the Kymera would weigh only 35 pounds, one person could haul it to the water.
The difficulty, in a world of 600-pound Jet Skis, was tracking down lightweight parts. Woods eventually found the solution when he clicked his way into a subculture of German R/C-boat enthusiasts. Through various websites, he discovered that “they like to build eight-foot-long, 20-horsepower mini yachts”—and there are many companies that produce components for them. He bought a miniature jet pump from one of the companies for $500.
How It Works: Motorized Body Board: A two-stroke gas engine drives a lightweight, high-volume jet pump, which expels water to create thrust and which diverts a small amount of water to cool the engine. The Kymera displaces less than an inch of water and travels up to 15 mph. Blanddesigns.co.uk
With the parts in hand, Woods split an off-the-rack kneeboard along its waterline, mounted the jet pump, a 26cc engine and a starter from an R/C plane, and duct-taped the housing back together. It coughed and choked, but it moved, and soon Woods was building a new version every year or so, tinkering with steering and propulsion configurations, moving the exhaust below the waterline, and trying to find the right balance of torque and water volume in the pump.
His fourth rebuild [pictured above] puts out 5 horsepower and gets up to 15 mph. It also incorporates carbon fiber and handlebars. Button-controlled servos move the jet pump back and forth, but steering is mostly a matter of leaning from side to side. When the rider cuts the throttle, the Kymera drifts to a stop.The next model, under construction now, will use a hybrid electric-propane four-stroke engine and reach 25 mph. “I’m already getting e-mails from guys who want to do whitewater with it,” he says. “I’ve proved the concept; now I want to find the extreme. The final version will fall in between.”
Woods estimates that with mass-produced parts, a basic model could retail for $1,000. But he says it’s not the market potential that keeps him going. It’s the idea that everyday people would finally have their own way of getting out on the water. “What would make it worth it,” he says, “is just seeing it on the roof of someone’s car, headed for the lake."
Name: Kymera Body Board
Inventor: Jason Woods
Time: 8 years
Cost: $40,000
When Jason Woods was 19 and living on his own for the first time, he decided to buy an old ski boat. The 1969 Sportster was perfect for driving girls around Lake Berryessa, near his home in Napa, California, but after a few months, he found that transporting and storing a 16-foot boat was an expensive hassle. He wanted a craft that he could toss in his car and carry to the water. Unfortunately, no options existed.
So Woods-who, at Napa’s New Technology High School, learned how make his own rockets and build battle-ready robots-came upwith the idea for the Kymera. The concept was a carbon-fiber body board powered by a small engine that would propel a rider at exhilarating speeds while displacing roughly half an inch of water. Vacationers could explore waterways without a boat, and because the Kymera would weigh only 35 pounds, one person could haul it to the water.
The difficulty, in a world of 600-pound Jet Skis, was tracking down lightweight parts. Woods eventually found the solution when he clicked his way into a subculture of German R/C-boat enthusiasts. Through various websites, he discovered that “they like to build eight-foot-long, 20-horsepower mini yachts”—and there are many companies that produce components for them. He bought a miniature jet pump from one of the companies for $500.
How It Works: Motorized Body Board: A two-stroke gas engine drives a lightweight, high-volume jet pump, which expels water to create thrust and which diverts a small amount of water to cool the engine. The Kymera displaces less than an inch of water and travels up to 15 mph. Blanddesigns.co.uk
With the parts in hand, Woods split an off-the-rack kneeboard along its waterline, mounted the jet pump, a 26cc engine and a starter from an R/C plane, and duct-taped the housing back together. It coughed and choked, but it moved, and soon Woods was building a new version every year or so, tinkering with steering and propulsion configurations, moving the exhaust below the waterline, and trying to find the right balance of torque and water volume in the pump.
His fourth rebuild [pictured above] puts out 5 horsepower and gets up to 15 mph. It also incorporates carbon fiber and handlebars. Button-controlled servos move the jet pump back and forth, but steering is mostly a matter of leaning from side to side. When the rider cuts the throttle, the Kymera drifts to a stop.The next model, under construction now, will use a hybrid electric-propane four-stroke engine and reach 25 mph. “I’m already getting e-mails from guys who want to do whitewater with it,” he says. “I’ve proved the concept; now I want to find the extreme. The final version will fall in between.”
Woods estimates that with mass-produced parts, a basic model could retail for $1,000. But he says it’s not the market potential that keeps him going. It’s the idea that everyday people would finally have their own way of getting out on the water. “What would make it worth it,” he says, “is just seeing it on the roof of someone’s car, headed for the lake."
Name: Kymera Body Board
Inventor: Jason Woods
Time: 8 years
Cost: $40,000
Medical Mirror
Medical Mirror
A no-touch system tracks your health
One night in late 2009, Ming-ZherPoh and his roommate, Dan McDuff, asked some friends to sit in front of a laptop. Poh, an electrical- and medical-engineering graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was trying to transform the computer’s webcam into a heart-rate monitor. He hoped that his software would allow doctors to check the vital signs of burn victims or babies without attaching uncomfortable clips, and that it would make it easier for adults to track their cardiovascular health over time. That night, the program wasn’t working in real time, but its measurements were near perfect. “Right away I knew we had something special,” Poh says.
A year and a half later, a large framed mirror embedded with a more refined version of Poh’s system sits in the MIT Media Lab. Behind the two-way glass, a webcam-equipped monitor is wired to a laptop. Stand before the mirror, and the otherwise blank monitor projects your heart rate on top of your reflection.
When your heart beats, it sends a pulse of blood through your blood vessels. Blood absorbs light, so when more of it travels through the vessels, less of the light hitting your skin is reflected. A webcam can pick up those small fluctuations in reflected light, Poh says, and a computer program can translate that data into a heart-rate reading.
How It Works: Medical Mirror: The webcam in a monitor behind the two-way mirror captures the changes in the light reflected off the subject’s face when the heart beats. The computer translates the light data into a heart rate reading. Blanddesigns.co.uk
Researchers had tracked this effect with a high-resolution camera, but Poh wanted to use a simple webcam so that nearly every computer and smartphone could double as a heart-rate monitor. To make that possible, he developed an algorithm that could pick out the heart rate’s light pattern from all the other reflected light captured by a webcam. With help from McDuff, a grad student at the MIT Media Lab, Poh wrote code to process the data in real time, allowing the laptop to generate an instant heart-rate reading.
Poh plans to try to bring the mirror to market after he finishes his Ph.D. later this year. He says the system could be used to measure other vitals as well, including respiratory rate and blood-oxygen saturation, which should broaden its appeal. “This shows your inner health,” he says. “Maybe as people use it, they’ll say, ‘This is part of my identity. It’s not just how I look on the outside.’"
Name: Medical Mirror
Inventor: Ming-ZherPoh
Time: 1½ years
Cost: Undisclosed
One night in late 2009, Ming-ZherPoh and his roommate, Dan McDuff, asked some friends to sit in front of a laptop. Poh, an electrical- and medical-engineering graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was trying to transform the computer’s webcam into a heart-rate monitor. He hoped that his software would allow doctors to check the vital signs of burn victims or babies without attaching uncomfortable clips, and that it would make it easier for adults to track their cardiovascular health over time. That night, the program wasn’t working in real time, but its measurements were near perfect. “Right away I knew we had something special,” Poh says.
A year and a half later, a large framed mirror embedded with a more refined version of Poh’s system sits in the MIT Media Lab. Behind the two-way glass, a webcam-equipped monitor is wired to a laptop. Stand before the mirror, and the otherwise blank monitor projects your heart rate on top of your reflection.
When your heart beats, it sends a pulse of blood through your blood vessels. Blood absorbs light, so when more of it travels through the vessels, less of the light hitting your skin is reflected. A webcam can pick up those small fluctuations in reflected light, Poh says, and a computer program can translate that data into a heart-rate reading.
How It Works: Medical Mirror: The webcam in a monitor behind the two-way mirror captures the changes in the light reflected off the subject’s face when the heart beats. The computer translates the light data into a heart rate reading. Blanddesigns.co.uk
Researchers had tracked this effect with a high-resolution camera, but Poh wanted to use a simple webcam so that nearly every computer and smartphone could double as a heart-rate monitor. To make that possible, he developed an algorithm that could pick out the heart rate’s light pattern from all the other reflected light captured by a webcam. With help from McDuff, a grad student at the MIT Media Lab, Poh wrote code to process the data in real time, allowing the laptop to generate an instant heart-rate reading.
Poh plans to try to bring the mirror to market after he finishes his Ph.D. later this year. He says the system could be used to measure other vitals as well, including respiratory rate and blood-oxygen saturation, which should broaden its appeal. “This shows your inner health,” he says. “Maybe as people use it, they’ll say, ‘This is part of my identity. It’s not just how I look on the outside.’"
Name: Medical Mirror
Inventor: Ming-ZherPoh
Time: 1½ years
Cost: Undisclosed
Recycling Shower
Recycling Shower
A cleaner wash feeds back water as you shower
Taking a shower draws more water and more energy than any other daily household activity. Low-flow showerheads save only a little of both, typically at the expense of comfort. That’s because they let the hot water—and all the heat energy it contains—go down the drain.
In 2004, Peter Brewin, an industrial-design student at the Royal College of Art in London, set about creating a more efficient shower that doesn’t require lower pressure. It couldn’t just capture and recirculate the water; most countries require shower water to meet potable-water standards. So instead he designed a miniature treatment plant that continuously captures, cleans, and recirculates 70 percent of the water used during a shower. Even with the energy the system consumes, it still uses 40 to 70 percent less power because the system doesn’t have to heat as much water. Over the course of a year, a typical household would use 20,000 to 32,000 fewer gallons of water with Brewin’s system. That, in turn, would save a local treatment plant upward of 200 kilowatt-hours of energy.
Because other water-treatment processes are too slow for real-time recirculation, Brewin decided to use pasteurization, the quick heating and cooling method for purifying milk. Shower water is already about 106°F when it hits the drain. A heat exchanger and a small electric heater raise the temperature the extra 56 degrees needed to reach the pasteurization point of 162°. To filter out dirt particles, Brewin constructed a funnel that spins the water that flows into it. Centrifugal force flings the heavy undissolved particles to the edges, where they are washed down the drain.
Within a year of starting work, Brewin had a proof-of-concept prototype. (To test its filtering ability, he would limit his showers to once a week.) Since then, he has licensed the technology to Australian engineering firm Cintep to solve remaining problems, such as how to more effectively remove shampoo residue. The first showers, which will most likely be installed in drought-prone cities and disaster areas, will debut next year.
Inventor: Peter Brewin
Invention: Recycling Shower
Cost: $1.75 million
HOW IT WORKS
A funnel separates undissolved particles from water. The water passes through a filter, a heat exchanger and a pasteurizer that kills any remaining bacteria. It circulates through the heat exchanger again and mixes with new cool water before entering the showerhead.
Taking a shower draws more water and more energy than any other daily household activity. Low-flow showerheads save only a little of both, typically at the expense of comfort. That’s because they let the hot water—and all the heat energy it contains—go down the drain.
In 2004, Peter Brewin, an industrial-design student at the Royal College of Art in London, set about creating a more efficient shower that doesn’t require lower pressure. It couldn’t just capture and recirculate the water; most countries require shower water to meet potable-water standards. So instead he designed a miniature treatment plant that continuously captures, cleans, and recirculates 70 percent of the water used during a shower. Even with the energy the system consumes, it still uses 40 to 70 percent less power because the system doesn’t have to heat as much water. Over the course of a year, a typical household would use 20,000 to 32,000 fewer gallons of water with Brewin’s system. That, in turn, would save a local treatment plant upward of 200 kilowatt-hours of energy.
Because other water-treatment processes are too slow for real-time recirculation, Brewin decided to use pasteurization, the quick heating and cooling method for purifying milk. Shower water is already about 106°F when it hits the drain. A heat exchanger and a small electric heater raise the temperature the extra 56 degrees needed to reach the pasteurization point of 162°. To filter out dirt particles, Brewin constructed a funnel that spins the water that flows into it. Centrifugal force flings the heavy undissolved particles to the edges, where they are washed down the drain.
Within a year of starting work, Brewin had a proof-of-concept prototype. (To test its filtering ability, he would limit his showers to once a week.) Since then, he has licensed the technology to Australian engineering firm Cintep to solve remaining problems, such as how to more effectively remove shampoo residue. The first showers, which will most likely be installed in drought-prone cities and disaster areas, will debut next year.
Inventor: Peter Brewin
Invention: Recycling Shower
Cost: $1.75 million
HOW IT WORKS
A funnel separates undissolved particles from water. The water passes through a filter, a heat exchanger and a pasteurizer that kills any remaining bacteria. It circulates through the heat exchanger again and mixes with new cool water before entering the showerhead.
NorEaster
NorEaster
A new helicopter engine design that's both safe and simple
When James O’Neill, a retired marketing executive, first learned how helicopter powertrains worked a decade ago, he immediately started redesigning them. Most helicopters have a huge transmission that reduces the engine’s high speed to a level more fit for the main propeller and turns the tail rotor to keep the aircraft from corkscrewing out of control. Engineers had found a way to get rid of the tail rotor years ago: Place a coaxial propeller on the main propeller, and spin it in the opposite direction. But doing so still required a complicated assembly to achieve the proper speed and to create spin in opposite directions. O’Neill realized that a cam engine, which trades a crankshaft for a series of lobed cams, could power both propellers at the right speed without the need for a weighty, maintenance-heavy gearbox. If he could just design a cam system that produced counter-rotational force, he’d have a new kind of helicopter that was simpler and lighter.
In O’Neill’s NorEaster engine, eight opposing pistons drive a pair of four-lobed cams. (The system could also work with four pistons.) A piston stroke cycle creates a quarter of a cam rotation. Piston engines run efficiently at 2,000 rpm; the four-lobed cams reduce the piston speed to 500 rpm at the rotor, ideal for smaller (up to 2,000 pounds) and unmanned helicopters. Between the two cams is a bevel-gear assembly whose sole function is to make the cams, and the rotors they drive, turn in opposite directions.
The current NorEaster prototype has a power-to-weight ratio comparable to most conventional helicopter power systems, even though O’Neill made it in a local machine shop from generator and weed-whacker parts. But it’s not yet light enough. To make the NorEaster a salable alternative, O’Neill will build a version made from lighter-weight, custom-machined parts with the goal of generating one horsepower per pound.
Cutting weight without losing power is a challenge, but O’Neill isn’t going it alone. A group of students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts recently analyzed and redesigned the NorEaster system for their senior project. O’Neill is now overseeing a team of volunteer machinists, engineers and friends to build the next prototype. They could test it in a helicopter as soon as next year. “These are basic pistons and cylinder heads and cams that have been used for 100-odd years,” O’Neill says. “It’s not rocket science.”
Inventor: James O'Neill
Invention: NorEaster
Cost: $10,000
HOW IT WORKS The NorEaster proof-of-concept prototype eliminates the crankshaft in favor of two rotating cams. A bevel-gear assembly makes them rotate counter to each other, providing equal rotational force in opposite directions. The next prototype will have four-lobed cams that work with four or eight pistons.
When James O’Neill, a retired marketing executive, first learned how helicopter powertrains worked a decade ago, he immediately started redesigning them. Most helicopters have a huge transmission that reduces the engine’s high speed to a level more fit for the main propeller and turns the tail rotor to keep the aircraft from corkscrewing out of control. Engineers had found a way to get rid of the tail rotor years ago: Place a coaxial propeller on the main propeller, and spin it in the opposite direction. But doing so still required a complicated assembly to achieve the proper speed and to create spin in opposite directions. O’Neill realized that a cam engine, which trades a crankshaft for a series of lobed cams, could power both propellers at the right speed without the need for a weighty, maintenance-heavy gearbox. If he could just design a cam system that produced counter-rotational force, he’d have a new kind of helicopter that was simpler and lighter.
In O’Neill’s NorEaster engine, eight opposing pistons drive a pair of four-lobed cams. (The system could also work with four pistons.) A piston stroke cycle creates a quarter of a cam rotation. Piston engines run efficiently at 2,000 rpm; the four-lobed cams reduce the piston speed to 500 rpm at the rotor, ideal for smaller (up to 2,000 pounds) and unmanned helicopters. Between the two cams is a bevel-gear assembly whose sole function is to make the cams, and the rotors they drive, turn in opposite directions.
The current NorEaster prototype has a power-to-weight ratio comparable to most conventional helicopter power systems, even though O’Neill made it in a local machine shop from generator and weed-whacker parts. But it’s not yet light enough. To make the NorEaster a salable alternative, O’Neill will build a version made from lighter-weight, custom-machined parts with the goal of generating one horsepower per pound.
Cutting weight without losing power is a challenge, but O’Neill isn’t going it alone. A group of students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts recently analyzed and redesigned the NorEaster system for their senior project. O’Neill is now overseeing a team of volunteer machinists, engineers and friends to build the next prototype. They could test it in a helicopter as soon as next year. “These are basic pistons and cylinder heads and cams that have been used for 100-odd years,” O’Neill says. “It’s not rocket science.”
Inventor: James O'Neill
Invention: NorEaster
Cost: $10,000
HOW IT WORKS The NorEaster proof-of-concept prototype eliminates the crankshaft in favor of two rotating cams. A bevel-gear assembly makes them rotate counter to each other, providing equal rotational force in opposite directions. The next prototype will have four-lobed cams that work with four or eight pistons.
Inflatable tourniquet
Inflatable tourniquet
This soldier-saving tourniquet stops bleeding in seconds
While serving as an army medic during Operation Desert Storm, Richard Schwartz became all too familiar with gunshot wounds, particularly shots to the pelvis and upper legs. Enemies would target that region because body armor doesn’t always cover it. Conventional tourniquets don’t work around the abdomen—it’s impossible to tie them tight enough to cut off blood flow from the aorta. Soldiers with “junctional hemorrhages” may have only a few minutes before they bleed to death.
At a medical conference in 2006, Schwartz, now the chairman of the emergency-medicine department at Georgia Health Sciences University, struck up a conversation with John Croushorn, a former Army surgeon, about how to solve the problem. Soon after, the two began working on an abdominal tourniquet. Their first design was a bladder shaped like a wedge, attached to a strap that could be tightened around the abdomen at the navel. When medics inflate the bladder with a hand pump, the wedge displaces the bowel and, eventually, compresses the aorta against the spine and the posterior abdominal wall. The blood flow to the lower body stops.
Schwartz and Croushorn continued to modify the device, but they couldn’t make it stable enough to use during combat, because jostling the patient caused the tourniquet to shift out of position. Ultimately they fixed the problem by adding a base plate to hold the bladder in place and a windlass, a lever at the front that tightens the tourniquet and then locks.
The inventors tested the new version first on pigs and later on people. Last October, they applied for FDA approval, expecting the process to take about three years. “Eight days later, the FDA told us they had accepted all our research,” Croushorn says. “We hadn’t even lined up a manufacturer yet.”
The U.S. Army soon ordered 60 tourniquets for combat medics, with the first batch delivered to troops in May. The U.K. ministry of defense and French and German special forces have also expressed interest. The inventors next plan to market the tourniquet for nonmilitary use, and have already had inquiries from several emergency medical-service and law-enforcement agencies.
Inventors: John Croushorn, Richard Schwartz
Invention: Inflatable tourniquet
Cost: $150,000
While serving as an army medic during Operation Desert Storm, Richard Schwartz became all too familiar with gunshot wounds, particularly shots to the pelvis and upper legs. Enemies would target that region because body armor doesn’t always cover it. Conventional tourniquets don’t work around the abdomen—it’s impossible to tie them tight enough to cut off blood flow from the aorta. Soldiers with “junctional hemorrhages” may have only a few minutes before they bleed to death.
At a medical conference in 2006, Schwartz, now the chairman of the emergency-medicine department at Georgia Health Sciences University, struck up a conversation with John Croushorn, a former Army surgeon, about how to solve the problem. Soon after, the two began working on an abdominal tourniquet. Their first design was a bladder shaped like a wedge, attached to a strap that could be tightened around the abdomen at the navel. When medics inflate the bladder with a hand pump, the wedge displaces the bowel and, eventually, compresses the aorta against the spine and the posterior abdominal wall. The blood flow to the lower body stops.
Schwartz and Croushorn continued to modify the device, but they couldn’t make it stable enough to use during combat, because jostling the patient caused the tourniquet to shift out of position. Ultimately they fixed the problem by adding a base plate to hold the bladder in place and a windlass, a lever at the front that tightens the tourniquet and then locks.
The inventors tested the new version first on pigs and later on people. Last October, they applied for FDA approval, expecting the process to take about three years. “Eight days later, the FDA told us they had accepted all our research,” Croushorn says. “We hadn’t even lined up a manufacturer yet.”
The U.S. Army soon ordered 60 tourniquets for combat medics, with the first batch delivered to troops in May. The U.K. ministry of defense and French and German special forces have also expressed interest. The inventors next plan to market the tourniquet for nonmilitary use, and have already had inquiries from several emergency medical-service and law-enforcement agencies.
Inventors: John Croushorn, Richard Schwartz
Invention: Inflatable tourniquet
Cost: $150,000
Over 7
Over 7
An engine mod uses waste heat to cut gas consumption.
For the better part of Frank Will’s life, he has been consumed with improving engine performance. He started racing motorcycles as a teenager in Germany in the 1970s, winning a world championship race in 1991, and later became an automotive engineer at Ford in Australia. When he left his job in 2008, he applied his passion to a new endeavor: Over7, a system that by redirecting and then heating an engine’s oil, cuts gas consumption by 7 percent and emissions by up to 30 percent.
Over7 heats oil to higher-than-usual temperatures, making it less viscous, without burning up the engine. The temperature of a warmed engine in a car running at a moderate speed, and the oil inside it, hovers at around 200°F. When the same engine is modified with an Over7 system, oil runs through it at 250° to 300°, while the engine block remains at 200°. Because this makes it easier to turn the crankshaft and run the oil pump, the engine requires less gas. The increased engine efficiency also reduces the emission of carbon dioxides, carbon monoxides and nitrogen oxides.
In the Over7 prototype, a bypass hose collects hot motor oil before it returns to the oil pan, where it would have cooled down, sending it instead to a heat exchanger that transfers heat from the engine’s exhaust gas and makes the oil even hotter. A thermostat ensures that the exit temperature of the oil does not get above 300°, so it’s still within most car manufacturers’ maximum temperature specifications.
Will is now testing his invention at the Ford emissions labs where he used to work. He says new cars featuring Over7-adapted engines could roll off the assembly line in less than five years. In that time, he also plans to finish a $200-to-$400 conversion kit that mechanics could use to install the system in older cars. Putting an Over7 system in every passenger vehicle in the U.S. would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 64 million tons every year, he says—and save drivers seven billion gallons of gasoline.
Inventor: Frank Will
Invention: Over7
Cost: $200,000
HOW IT WORKS Oil flows through a bypass pipe into a heat exchanger, rather than flowing back into an oil pan to cool. Once the oil is heated to as high as 300˚, a flap valve in the heat exchanger redirects exhaust gas into an exhaust bypass so that no further heat transfers to the oil.
For the better part of Frank Will’s life, he has been consumed with improving engine performance. He started racing motorcycles as a teenager in Germany in the 1970s, winning a world championship race in 1991, and later became an automotive engineer at Ford in Australia. When he left his job in 2008, he applied his passion to a new endeavor: Over7, a system that by redirecting and then heating an engine’s oil, cuts gas consumption by 7 percent and emissions by up to 30 percent.
Over7 heats oil to higher-than-usual temperatures, making it less viscous, without burning up the engine. The temperature of a warmed engine in a car running at a moderate speed, and the oil inside it, hovers at around 200°F. When the same engine is modified with an Over7 system, oil runs through it at 250° to 300°, while the engine block remains at 200°. Because this makes it easier to turn the crankshaft and run the oil pump, the engine requires less gas. The increased engine efficiency also reduces the emission of carbon dioxides, carbon monoxides and nitrogen oxides.
In the Over7 prototype, a bypass hose collects hot motor oil before it returns to the oil pan, where it would have cooled down, sending it instead to a heat exchanger that transfers heat from the engine’s exhaust gas and makes the oil even hotter. A thermostat ensures that the exit temperature of the oil does not get above 300°, so it’s still within most car manufacturers’ maximum temperature specifications.
Will is now testing his invention at the Ford emissions labs where he used to work. He says new cars featuring Over7-adapted engines could roll off the assembly line in less than five years. In that time, he also plans to finish a $200-to-$400 conversion kit that mechanics could use to install the system in older cars. Putting an Over7 system in every passenger vehicle in the U.S. would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 64 million tons every year, he says—and save drivers seven billion gallons of gasoline.
Inventor: Frank Will
Invention: Over7
Cost: $200,000
HOW IT WORKS Oil flows through a bypass pipe into a heat exchanger, rather than flowing back into an oil pan to cool. Once the oil is heated to as high as 300˚, a flap valve in the heat exchanger redirects exhaust gas into an exhaust bypass so that no further heat transfers to the oil.
Launch Skates
Launch Skates
Spring-loaded skates that give hockey players a boost
David Blois manages condominium properties near Toronto, but at any given time he’s usually also working on several inventions—a solar-powered smoke detector, say, or an age-spot-erasing skin cream. In 1998 he was ice skating at his local rink when an idea popped into his head: a hockey skate that used springs to harness a skater’s kinetic energy. “It’s really hard to invent something new,” Blois says. “As I researched patents, I got more excited. No one had ever tried this before.”
Ice skates haven’t changed much in 5,000 years. Whether they’re made of leather and sharpened whalebone or carbon fiber and stainless steel, every one of them consists of a boot, a blade and something to hold them together. To make his Launch Skates, Blois had a prototype builder insert two compression springs into the hollow plastic blade holders on a pair of battered hockey skates and then attach the springs to the blades (one at the toe, one at the heel). When the skater begins his stride, the springs compress and the blade slides a few millimeters up into the holder. As he lifts his foot, the springs release their stored energy, and the blade slides to its original position, giving the skater an extra push off the ice.
Blois hasn’t had the money to get ice time and run comprehensive time and fatigue trials with hired skaters. But experts who have tried the skates see the benefits. “They feel a little different, but once you get used to them, you can definitely feel a boost, especially getting going from a standing start,” says Bill Heath, a hockey instructor with Hockey Extreme hockey school in Toronto. “I skated for 20 minutes and I felt less fatigued.” Michael Austin, an athletic therapist and amateur hockey player, says that the skates allow players to push with just their forefoot rather than skating flatfooted, and that could reduce injuries to muscles and joints.
Another tester, however—Curtis Brown, a center for more than a decade in the NHL and now a youth-development coach for the San Jose Sharks—says the skates still need to provide better balance and be more responsive for quick direction changes. To address these concerns, Blois will machine-mold blade holders with tighter spring tolerances. After that, he plans to approach skate manufacturers. If a company licenses the design, he says, it could put Launch Skates on the ice within a year.
Inventor: David Blois
Invention: Launch Skates
Cost: $20,000
HOW IT WORKS
When a skater steps on the ice, the Launch Skates’ springs compress, storing kinetic energy that is released when the skater takes a stride. By placing springs under the toe and heel, the back of the blade can move a different amount than the front, making the skate more responsive.
David Blois manages condominium properties near Toronto, but at any given time he’s usually also working on several inventions—a solar-powered smoke detector, say, or an age-spot-erasing skin cream. In 1998 he was ice skating at his local rink when an idea popped into his head: a hockey skate that used springs to harness a skater’s kinetic energy. “It’s really hard to invent something new,” Blois says. “As I researched patents, I got more excited. No one had ever tried this before.”
Ice skates haven’t changed much in 5,000 years. Whether they’re made of leather and sharpened whalebone or carbon fiber and stainless steel, every one of them consists of a boot, a blade and something to hold them together. To make his Launch Skates, Blois had a prototype builder insert two compression springs into the hollow plastic blade holders on a pair of battered hockey skates and then attach the springs to the blades (one at the toe, one at the heel). When the skater begins his stride, the springs compress and the blade slides a few millimeters up into the holder. As he lifts his foot, the springs release their stored energy, and the blade slides to its original position, giving the skater an extra push off the ice.
Blois hasn’t had the money to get ice time and run comprehensive time and fatigue trials with hired skaters. But experts who have tried the skates see the benefits. “They feel a little different, but once you get used to them, you can definitely feel a boost, especially getting going from a standing start,” says Bill Heath, a hockey instructor with Hockey Extreme hockey school in Toronto. “I skated for 20 minutes and I felt less fatigued.” Michael Austin, an athletic therapist and amateur hockey player, says that the skates allow players to push with just their forefoot rather than skating flatfooted, and that could reduce injuries to muscles and joints.
Another tester, however—Curtis Brown, a center for more than a decade in the NHL and now a youth-development coach for the San Jose Sharks—says the skates still need to provide better balance and be more responsive for quick direction changes. To address these concerns, Blois will machine-mold blade holders with tighter spring tolerances. After that, he plans to approach skate manufacturers. If a company licenses the design, he says, it could put Launch Skates on the ice within a year.
Inventor: David Blois
Invention: Launch Skates
Cost: $20,000
HOW IT WORKS
When a skater steps on the ice, the Launch Skates’ springs compress, storing kinetic energy that is released when the skater takes a stride. By placing springs under the toe and heel, the back of the blade can move a different amount than the front, making the skate more responsive.
PuzzleCast
PuzzleCast
The cast can be removed piece by piece for sectional healing.
When Kelly Anderson shed her arm cast two months after a wrist operation, her joints were so stiff she couldn’t turn a doorknob. She didn’t fully recover for another four months. Daniel Amante suffered similar post-cast complications after he injured his knee; Amanda Harton watched her soccer teammates struggle following various injuries; and Clara Tran saw even greater suffering among the frail patients in the nursing home where she volunteered. By the time the four met as undergrads at the University of Virginia, they all recognized a common medical dilemma: Long periods of immobilization help heal broken bones and other injuries but can harm otherwise healthy joints and muscles.
In 2009, during a biomedical-engineering course, the professor challenged the students to solve a problem that was important to them. They set about finding a way to reduce the harm that casts cause. After considering several ideas, they decided to create a modular cast. The device would secure the entire arm like a conventional cast, but a doctor could disassemble it a piece at a time as the bone healed, freeing up the arm to make specific movements one by one to build flexibility and increase blood flow to muscles—and reduce the length of physical therapy after the cast is removed by as much as half.
he students wrapped clay around their arms to determine the best shapes and positions for the pieces and then built and tested plastic prototypes. They had a doctor put Harton in a regular cast, measured her range of motion, and put her in a prototype to compare the results. After four months, the students had a fully functional version of their invention, which they called PuzzleCast.
The device has six removable pieces. Two pieces brace the forearm and hand, keeping the broken limb stable. The rest restrict each of the lower arm’s four movements: the bending of the elbow and the up-down, side-to-side and twisting of the wrist. A cast technician assembles the kit by putting the heat-moldable plastic in hot water, shaping the cast around the patient’s arm, and snapping in rivets to fasten the pieces. The application time is about the same as for a standard cast. To take a piece off, doctors just remove its rivets.
In 2011 the students received a $10,000 grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance to test the PuzzleCast’s effects on people who wore one for several weeks. The next step, they say, is to license the design to a manufacturer that can do clinical trials, develop more sizes and a version for legs, and bring the PuzzleCast to patients, possibly as soon as in the next three years.
Inventors: Daniel Amante, Kelly Anderson, Amanda Harton, Clara Tran
Invention: PuzzleCast
Cost: $10,300
HOW IT WORKS
The cast consists of six pieces that can be removed independently, enabling patients to move more parts sooner
When Kelly Anderson shed her arm cast two months after a wrist operation, her joints were so stiff she couldn’t turn a doorknob. She didn’t fully recover for another four months. Daniel Amante suffered similar post-cast complications after he injured his knee; Amanda Harton watched her soccer teammates struggle following various injuries; and Clara Tran saw even greater suffering among the frail patients in the nursing home where she volunteered. By the time the four met as undergrads at the University of Virginia, they all recognized a common medical dilemma: Long periods of immobilization help heal broken bones and other injuries but can harm otherwise healthy joints and muscles.
In 2009, during a biomedical-engineering course, the professor challenged the students to solve a problem that was important to them. They set about finding a way to reduce the harm that casts cause. After considering several ideas, they decided to create a modular cast. The device would secure the entire arm like a conventional cast, but a doctor could disassemble it a piece at a time as the bone healed, freeing up the arm to make specific movements one by one to build flexibility and increase blood flow to muscles—and reduce the length of physical therapy after the cast is removed by as much as half.
he students wrapped clay around their arms to determine the best shapes and positions for the pieces and then built and tested plastic prototypes. They had a doctor put Harton in a regular cast, measured her range of motion, and put her in a prototype to compare the results. After four months, the students had a fully functional version of their invention, which they called PuzzleCast.
The device has six removable pieces. Two pieces brace the forearm and hand, keeping the broken limb stable. The rest restrict each of the lower arm’s four movements: the bending of the elbow and the up-down, side-to-side and twisting of the wrist. A cast technician assembles the kit by putting the heat-moldable plastic in hot water, shaping the cast around the patient’s arm, and snapping in rivets to fasten the pieces. The application time is about the same as for a standard cast. To take a piece off, doctors just remove its rivets.
In 2011 the students received a $10,000 grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance to test the PuzzleCast’s effects on people who wore one for several weeks. The next step, they say, is to license the design to a manufacturer that can do clinical trials, develop more sizes and a version for legs, and bring the PuzzleCast to patients, possibly as soon as in the next three years.
Inventors: Daniel Amante, Kelly Anderson, Amanda Harton, Clara Tran
Invention: PuzzleCast
Cost: $10,300
HOW IT WORKS
The cast consists of six pieces that can be removed independently, enabling patients to move more parts sooner
iOptik
iOptik
A set of contact lenses that turns the wearer's field of vision into a screen.
After two decades as an electrical engineer, Randy Sprague quit his job in 2008 to start a solar power company. He had been planning the venture for years, saving up, getting his wife’s blessing. But then one morning while taking a shower, he had a brainstorm for an entirely different idea: contact lenses that could act as part of a wearable display. Users could instantly augment their view with information—say, the price of an antique in a store or the species of a tree in the forest—or transform their field of vision into a virtual videogame screen. Suddenly the solar company no longer seemed as appealing.
Sprague had designed wearable displays used by the military at his old job but found it difficult to produce a lightweight one with a wide field of view. What he realized in the shower was that he could sidestep those problems by moving the screen to a pair of glasses and adding an image filter right on the user’s eye. To develop the invention, he founded a company he named Innovega. Within 18 months, he had received a National Science Foundation grant.
In Sprague’s current prototype, called iOptik, two small projectors mounted on each arm of a pair of eyeglasses cast an image on the inside surface of polycarbonate lenses. Two sets of nanofilters made from minuscule wires embedded in each contact lens permit different light sources to enter the user’s eye. The outer filter lets through unpolarized light from the outside world. The inner filter lets in only light from the projectors, by blocking out light of different wavelengths. This allows the user to see the display image and the outside world simultaneously. Users will also be able to switch from the see-through mode to a totally occluded mode so they can play a videogame or watch a 3-D movie with a 120-degree field of vision.
iOptik is not alone in the burgeoning field of augmented-reality devices. Other companies, including Google, have AR systems in development, but those displays are far heavier or have a much smaller visual field. Sprague says his invention will be ready for FDA testing by the spring of 2014, and he is currently in talks with electronics companies interested in licensing it. Innovega recently received funding from Darpa, the Pentagon’s R&D arm, which plans to use iOptik as part of a project aimed at equipping troops with “super vision.” Using iOptik lenses, soldiers could, for example, call up an overhead map of a battlefield while at the same time seeing the real thing right in front of them.
Inventor: Randy Sprague
Invention: iOptik
Cost: Undisclosed
HOW IT WORKS Each iOptik contact lens has two embedded nanofilters. An outer filter lets in light from the outside world; an inner filter lets in images from projectors mounted on the arms of a pair of glasses. The combination gives the user an augmented-reality view.
After two decades as an electrical engineer, Randy Sprague quit his job in 2008 to start a solar power company. He had been planning the venture for years, saving up, getting his wife’s blessing. But then one morning while taking a shower, he had a brainstorm for an entirely different idea: contact lenses that could act as part of a wearable display. Users could instantly augment their view with information—say, the price of an antique in a store or the species of a tree in the forest—or transform their field of vision into a virtual videogame screen. Suddenly the solar company no longer seemed as appealing.
Sprague had designed wearable displays used by the military at his old job but found it difficult to produce a lightweight one with a wide field of view. What he realized in the shower was that he could sidestep those problems by moving the screen to a pair of glasses and adding an image filter right on the user’s eye. To develop the invention, he founded a company he named Innovega. Within 18 months, he had received a National Science Foundation grant.
In Sprague’s current prototype, called iOptik, two small projectors mounted on each arm of a pair of eyeglasses cast an image on the inside surface of polycarbonate lenses. Two sets of nanofilters made from minuscule wires embedded in each contact lens permit different light sources to enter the user’s eye. The outer filter lets through unpolarized light from the outside world. The inner filter lets in only light from the projectors, by blocking out light of different wavelengths. This allows the user to see the display image and the outside world simultaneously. Users will also be able to switch from the see-through mode to a totally occluded mode so they can play a videogame or watch a 3-D movie with a 120-degree field of vision.
iOptik is not alone in the burgeoning field of augmented-reality devices. Other companies, including Google, have AR systems in development, but those displays are far heavier or have a much smaller visual field. Sprague says his invention will be ready for FDA testing by the spring of 2014, and he is currently in talks with electronics companies interested in licensing it. Innovega recently received funding from Darpa, the Pentagon’s R&D arm, which plans to use iOptik as part of a project aimed at equipping troops with “super vision.” Using iOptik lenses, soldiers could, for example, call up an overhead map of a battlefield while at the same time seeing the real thing right in front of them.
Inventor: Randy Sprague
Invention: iOptik
Cost: Undisclosed
HOW IT WORKS Each iOptik contact lens has two embedded nanofilters. An outer filter lets in light from the outside world; an inner filter lets in images from projectors mounted on the arms of a pair of glasses. The combination gives the user an augmented-reality view.