Every container a submarine

Why using ships for container transport when we can make a ship of each container. Moreover, we make a submarine of every container!

Why should we do that?

Well, it's the economy:

1. Ships are big and inflexible and cost money if not in use. Making a temporary ship of every container only when needed avoids extra costs as a result of higher supply than needed or of higher demand than can be met.

2. A ship needs a captain, which costs a lot of money. Ships and containers are going slowly, a captain is needed because big ships can damage a lot of things if out of control. So small entities of one container going along a cable directed by a computer just as an elevator lying horizontally would be a much saver and cheaper way of transport.

3. Using diesel will not be acceptable in the next decades, and electricity will likely be the alternative. Since batteries for a ship are not very suitable because of the weight and because of charging times the electricity is likely to be provided by an isolated cable on the bottom of the river (Who said road transport is still an alternative?). For a ship with one big engine needing big powers a cable is not very practical in opposition to a row of containers each powered with a small engine.

4. A ship transports a lot of containers to be delivered at several ports. The delivering of the last containers must wait until the rest is delivered. Containers that are moving independently can go as desired without going to ports just because some other container has to go there.

Ok, but how should we do that?

Well, with ordinary technology from the shelve.

1. A container is delivered by a sea ship at the port.

2. In the port the container is provided with an engine device and sealed in a (very) big bag, and provided with enough ballast or buoyancy so that the container is just a bit floating up for easy maneuvering.

3. The engine device is coupled to and gets its energy via induction from an isolated electric cable at the bottom of the river.

4. The destination port was already programmed into the container chip and transmitted to the engine chip. The engine chip now knows which way to go at diverge points of the cable.

5. The container starts its journey to the desired port, slowly and surely...

And what will be of the former captains?

Since all the rivers and canals are now available for tourism the former captains are organising the Rotterdam - Budapest hydrofoil regatta, taking tourists into their hydrofoil race sailboats.

Kayaking and vortices

Last summer, when I was kayaking hungrily over the Wadden Sea and a seal was following me, I looked at my paddle and saw that it did more than I want.

Every time I put the paddle blade in the water next to me it was making one vortex on each side of the blade! Well, actually not the paddle did it, but me! The fact was that I myself was losing energy to make those two vortices each time I put a paddle blade into the water.

On the picture (it's not me by the way) you see the two vortices: one at the shaft and one in the middle of the blade. So after one left stroke and one right stroke four vortices are made.

Estimating that the energy in one vortex is about 10 Joule (yes, I made some doubtful calculations), the total energy lost by doing one left and one right stroke is about 40 Joule. I do both strokes, left and right, in about one second so I lose 40 Joules per second, which is the same as 40 Watt.

Considering that I am not very trained and can produce about 250 Watt on the Wadden Sea, those vortices have cost me 16% of my power!

That's quite much.

So, how to get rid of those vortices? Vortices arise along sharp edges moving through water, like the sides of a paddle blade. Rounding the edges may help a little. But better is to get rid of the water flow around the blade, then no vortex has reason to occur.

If we had a blade through which the water could flow as there were no blade at all, so with no resistance, we would have no vortices. But without a blade there is no resistance to move forward with our kayak.
We need a special blade. A blade that is non permeable (100% closed) in the middle and 100% open at the edge where water can flow without any resistance. In between the openness should vary from non permeable in the middle to fully permeable at the edge of the blade.

A blade like this will not show flowing water around the edges and no vortices will arise. Making a blade like this in a simple way means drilling a lot of holes through a blade - that is to say in the middle none and going to the edge more and more.
Better would be to use a suitable material, some membrane ranging in permeability. And to compensate for the openness the blade must be some bigger of course.

But when all the work is done I should sign in for the kayak championships!

Robots, how will they look like?

As I looked into my desintegrating copy of "I, Robot" from Isaac Asimov the other day similarities with the smartphone came up.

Years ago, as mobile phones still looked like mobile phones, there was some debate whether it would be usefull to add a camera, an agenda etcetera. I myself was not sure either, I liked my pocket knife but if I would loose it I would loose also my scissors, corkscrew and can opener.
And indeed, a few weeks ago I lost my iPhone and with it my address book, my notes, my books, my camera, my watch and also my phone.

But the decision has been made: the smartphone is a money maker nowadays. (If you are not sure about that take a look at Apple's profits.)

Since many years robots are making cars, milking cows and since short they are communicating with Alzheimer patients (see http://www.parorobots.com/). But they are good at one thing only, they are specialised. And so they will extinct. For two reasons. They are too expensive and there is no demand.

1. The tasks robots perform will extend and will be more sensitive: cows have to be milked, but in future cows will also be checked on deseases during milking. So milk robots have to be more intelligent and have to be able to use more tools. And so they will be more expensive. Too expensive for a farmer. May be a modulair system will last for a while, but the lack off mass production will bankrupt everything in the end.

2. The farmer has not only 100 cows but also a bedridden mother who has to take care of. So, he wants a robot that can milk his cows and help his mother going to the toilet and can make coffee for him. An ordinary milk robot can't do that. So he wants a robot that can perform all tasks humans can perform: a humanoid robot.

Here we see the same development as we have seen with smartphones. And more similarities come up. Unlimited number of apps are available for the smartphone on the internet. The same will happen with robot skills. You just download the skill from the internet into your robot and he can perform the new task. Better, robots will learn tasks by themselfes and by uploading the skill to the internet teach other robots.

One last question: how will mankind survive?

Nature's wheel

Last spring I was driving to East Germany and talking with my brother. We saw the wheels of a truck next to us. The first thing that came up whas the inefficiency of a wheel. Only about 5% of the wheel is touching the road and bearing the truck, the other 95% is busy traveling around until it can touch the road again.

So, if we need only 5% of the wheel, why not get rid of the other 95%?

May be we need another 5% to be used immediately after the first 5% is used. When the first 5% is used up for rolling and bearing the truck it cannot be ready again immediately, so we need a second 5% to be used alternately with the first 5%.

If we would let the first 5% go around after it was used it needs to travel a long way (90%), so we may better just move it back, the distance is then only 10%.
But how should we move it back without causing resistance by touching the road? Two possibilities: 1. lowering the resistance by adding small wheels or liquid or something and 2. lifting it up a bit so it won't touch the road.

Let's consider the second possibility. If we lift it up by means of a hinge somewhere we have made a knee. Hey, that's interesting, where have we seen this before?

Oh, and if we don't need to move the 5% around the axis we have place to move up the axis which doubles the radius and therefore halves the rolling resistance! Oh, and with such a knee we can adjust for bumpy roads like rocky paths.

The round wheel has been evolved away a long, long time ago.

Why am I doing this?

Finally I start a blog. I like to write about innovation, inventing, thoughts that come up. I'm not a writer, I know more or less how to write but knowing and doing is not the same. So at first this blog will probably be a sort of journal for myself, where I can write down ideas that come up during the day.

May be later I'll learn to write and hopefully I can inspire you to use your brain for generating new ideas, or eventually you see an idea coming around that fits your needs or your interest. I'm always interested to elaborate further on ideas, so contact me. Sometimes an idea ends up in a real invention and sometimes a real invention ends up in a real product and sometimes a real product ends up in ..., etcetera.

Here we see already two difficulties:
1. Ideas come up in high numbers and there is simply no time to look at all of them in detail. Thats one of the reasons to write them down here, anybody who likes one of them can do with it what she likes.
2. It's a long run from an idea to a real product. Some people say an idea is nothing, an invention is a start, a product is something and with a desired product we are talking. But in the end without ideas no inventions and no products.

The idea is like the gene combination of an apple tree, the invention is the apple pit, the product is the apple tree and the desired product are the apples. So without apple genes no apples, but in between the tree first has to grow up.

Another problem with ideas, inventings, products is that it makes people lazy. The cave-dweller had to find the way back home by remembering landmarks or stars. Later the map, the compass and the clock was invented and now there is the tomtom. Tomtom users cannot read maps anymore, map readers cannot read compass and stars anymore and compass users cannot read stars anymore.

But the good thing on ideas are that ideas are just fun, inventing is fun, using your brains is fun. It is a sort of discovery of what can be invented just by using your brains. Imagine for example the time over lets say 1.000 or 10.000 years, nobody will argue that we do everything the same as now, so a lot of inventions have to be made by then.

So why not doing it right now? Everything needed is already available!