Automatically adjusted tires

It always fascinated me how there are two completely opposite types of movement on the ground: skating/sliding and wheels. The former requires no friction while the latter requires maximum friction. In the latter, tires are designed to have maximal friction with the road to get a better grip and reduce the sliding that may occur and cause loss of control over the car. However, tires are fixed while the road may change. There are different types of tires, if you know which road you're going to be driving on. I'm not talking about snow or ice, but rather on different types of roads like asphalt, dirt, concrete. The tires could be optimized for each one but not for all of them.

Nowadays there are materials that can change their shape and other mechanical properties very rapidly, usually through electrical current, such as shape memory alloys. I propose embedding these materials into tires and making them automatically adjustable to the road driven. One example on how to do that is to control the grooves on the tires, which lend them their grip. By lining these grooves with shape memory alloys, one can adjust their width and shape and thus change the mechanical and frictional properties of the tires. If you can thus switch between a tire that is good for asphalt to one that is good for dirt, automatically, then the grip on the road will remain optimal at all times.

A question rises on how to ascertain the type of road the car is on. One can either do it manually, by adding a dial on the dashboard to control which tire is now "on". Another way is to embed some sensor either on the tire, but probably preferable on the car, that detects the type of road and automatically adjusts the shape of the tires' grooves to the optimal one.

The last issue is the electricity required for the change. Usually, these materials require energy only upon changing from one state to the other, but even if not, the car has battery and the amount of electricity required is minimal, compared to other requirements in a car.

To conclude, one can not only optimize the materials and shape of the tire, but combining both one can enjoy all worlds of dynamically optimizing the tires' grooves' shape such that they will give the best grip and friction for the specific road traveled, thus increasing the driver and passengers' safety.

Pulsed-taste Candy

In recent psychological studies, Dan Arieli has shown something that is pretty obvious and yet powerful. It is better to have good things with breaks in the middle; that's how you enjoy the good things more. Each start is important and you do not habituate to the "goodness" of it, and thus making it boring. (A side note is that the bad things should be lumped together, to get them over with and to habituate to them. Something most people don't do).

Integrating this concept to candy, which is (I believe "by definition") a good thing, results in something that is lacking in the candy repertoire: a pulsed-taste candy. This means that the good taste of the candy should come in pulses, with breaks in the middle of neutral taste. Candy usually are "optimized" to either very good taste in the beginning (which sometimes have some after-taste), or "lasting taste", which habituates the usefulness and enjoyability of the taste.

My proposition is to engineer a candy that has good-neutral-good-neutral-etc. sequence of tastes. How to do that? I can think of two possible methods. The first is layered candy, meaning that the candy has several, hopefully more than four, layers that are either licked or sucked. Thus, each layer is exposed in a sequence slowly during the process. The key here is to have neutral-taste layers, such that the mouth (and us) "forget" the good taste and do not habituate to it. The next layer, after the neutral one, is again delicious, hopefully in another taste that again triggers our enjoyment.

The second option is to chemically engineer the substrates of the candy, such that the decomposition in the mouth, due to the enzymes that degrades the candy, release different tastes in a sequence. This is obviously much harder, but I believe still plausible way to go about it.

The point in both of these is to have long-lasting enjoyable taste and the good feeling of a tasty candy. I believe that my proposition is better equipped than simply have a long lasting single taste.

To summarize, good things should be pulses: good-neutral-good-neutral. I suggest to extend this concept to candy such that tastes will be better appreciated. Bon appetite!

Crafted Umbrellas

From a little survey of how umbrellas look and function, they are pretty much the same. A round, folding canvas above you head. Below are several suggestions for different designs, technology and functions of umbrellas.

Asymmetric umbrellas: why are all umbrellas symmetric? It's probably because the folding design. However, their function should not be symmetric. If you have a large backpack with a precious laptop in it, you want a lot of protection on back; much more elaborate than for the face. Also, if you're walking with your umbrella-less friend, you want to be able to extend the umbrella. I propose asymmetric umbrellas: oval shaped either on the front-back axis for protection of backpacks, or sideways-axis for a more-than-one person umbrella.

Hardened umbrellas. One of the most annoying things is wind, which usually accompanies the rain. However, most umbrella designers seem to have forgotten this basic fact. Umbrellas always fold the wrong way or completely brake in the very first squall. I propose hardened umbrellas: there are materials today that can change their hardness upon electrical current. Wouldn't it be nice to have a button on the umbrella that can harden it completely and then make it flabby again when we fold it? Better yet, plugging in a wind sensor could make this shift automatic, to have the optimal hardness given the current wind condition.

Water-collecting umbrellas. Another annoying aspect of umbrellas is that they protect you from the rain, but then water drips from its edges, usually on your feet or backpack. Why not have a drainage tube on the rim of the umbrella and either collect the water or make it flow into one constant flow, instead of every-which way?

These are just a handful of design projects to improve the lives of all the wet people.

May you have a dry day!

Renovation with Technology

I walk along Cambridge MA and see very beautiful old houses. I figure there are many of those scattered in the US and old Europe. While the view is charming and nostalgic, I'm pretty sure the inside of these houses are problematic at best, due to old plumbing, electricity and general maintenance. Obviously, one can tear down the house and build a new modern one, but that will break the style of the city and will leave a gaping hole in the fabric of nostalgia.

I propose a project that will both renovate the house and keep the style together. There are technologies today that can easily create a full 3D reconstruction of buildings out of mere photos taken from many sides (e.g. Building Rome in a Day). Furthermore, there are other very cheap technologies that use range sensing that can map the 3D structure of the house, e.g. Kinect. I propose to take an old and beautiful house and create a full 3D reconstruction of it. Then, design a fully modern, fully technologically equipped house that is both energy efficient, green and carry the most advanced technologies of the smart home, with the "minor" constraint that the outside appearance of the house would be exactly the same as the old one, with the failing paint job and rusty looking frames. Modern paints can have the look of old one but still be completely functioning in any weather. Moreover, by designing the house to be modular in every aspect, i.e. accessible panels for electricity and plumbing, light and strong interior walls, etc. one can build a house that will keep the appearance of old but be continually renovated as technology progresses.

This is a purely architectural and design project, but it holds the future of keeping the beautiful landscape of old towns with a renovation that is based in technology: living in an old-looking house should not be equivalent to living in an old house. Technology can definitely fix that.