RoboClam Is A Digging Machine

A razor clam, left, which inspired the RoboClam, right.

Donna Covey/MIT

The razor clam, rarely heralded for its agility, is an amazing digger. So engineers at MIT stole a few tricks from the slim, candy bar–size mollusk to build an efficient aquatic machine called RoboClam. 

In nature

To burrow, a razor clam begins to squeeze its shells together. Surrounding sand falls into the newly created space. Further squeezing draws water into the mix, making a pocket of quicksand that the clam pulls itself through with ease.

In the lab

The RoboClam works similarly.In version 2.0, now in progress, an electric actuator expands and contracts three aluminum wedges to turn nearby sand into a slurry. A weight allows the cylindrical unit to sink slightly, and the process repeats.

Results

“A razor clam can dig one third of a mile through underwater soil on the amount of energy in a double-A battery,” says mechanical engineer Amos Winter. RoboClam 1.0 uses 10 times as much, but since it has more mass, its efficiency is comparable. And unlike existing industrial diggers, Robo-Clam doesn’t use exponentially more energy as it goes deeper.

Application

Winter envisions RoboClam anchoring undersea robots, blowing up underwater mines, securing transoceanic cable, and exploring alien oceans.

Ballast Bulb

More than 780 million people rely on kerosene to light their homes. But the fuel is pricey and is toxic when burned—not to mention a fire hazard. In 2008, London-based product designer Martin Riddiford and his colleague Jim Reeves decided to create a cheap, safe alternative.
Riddiford knew a falling weight could produce enough energy to run a grandfather clock, so why not a light? To find out, he attached the crank of a wind-up flashlight to a bicycle wheel. He hung a weight from the wheel to cause it to spin; the wheel cranked the flashlight, and the device lit up.
Over the next four years, Riddiford, Reeves, and a small team spent their downtime between projects in a basement, refining the GravityLight. To use it, a person hangs the device and fills an attached fabric bag with up to 28 pounds of rocks, dirt, or other material. Lifting and releasing the bag steadily pulls a notched belt through GravityLight's plastic hub; the belt spins a series of gears to drive a small motor, which continuously powers an LED for about 30 minutes.
The team used crowdfunding to manufacture 1,000 GravityLights, which it plans to send to developing countries for field testing—plus 6,000 more for backers. "It's exciting to witness so much positive reaction to what we're doing," Riddiford says. Besides remote villages, the lamp could prove handy in campsites, closets, and any dark nook far from a socket, so Riddiford also hopes to license a retail version for less than $10.

GravityLight

Graham Murdoch

HOW IT WORKS

1) As a weighted bag descends, it tugs a belt to turn a series of plastic gears.
2) The gears work in unison to spin an electric motor.
3) The motor powers a small yet bright LED, providing continuous illumination for about 30 minutes—the maximum amount of time that the bag can take to descend.
4) External connectors can power low-voltage devices, and the entire system is designed to work for thousands of lift-and-drop cycles.
INVENTORS
Jim Reeves, Martin Riddiford
COMPANY
Therefore
INVENTION
GravityLight
COST TO DEVELOP
More than $300,000
MATURITY
8/10

Firm Footing

During a professional snowmobiling race in 2008, Mike Schultz lost control of his machine while speeding over a ragged stretch of snow. His left foot hit the ground so hard that his leg hyperextended nearly all the way in the wrong direction, shattering his knee and forcing doctors to amputate just above the joint. "I'm looking at my wife saying, 'What are we going to do now?' " Schultz says. "I'm a professional athlete, and I'm not going to be able to do this stuff anymore."
Schultz's instinct was right: Conventional prosthetic legs couldn't stand up to his high-impact lifestyle. So in early 2009, he designed and built a limb that could. Its key feature was the Moto Knee, which uses an adjustable 250psi mountain bike shock absorber to regulate the joint's stiffness with compressed air. But snowboarders and skateboarders also require critical toe pressure and ankle tension, so Schultz added the Versa Foot—a foot-ankle assembly that also uses a pneumatic shock absorber to emulate joint resistance. Together, the two parts complete an artificial lower limb that's impact-resistant, waterproof, and quickly customizable for a range of high-performance activities.
Schultz recently returned to competition and won a gold medal at the 2013 X Games Aspen. This spring, he expects to sell his new-and-improved prosthetic not only to amputee atheletes, but also to soldiers returning from conflicts with missing limbs. "This whole project started out because I wanted to allow myself to do the things I wanted to do, but it's evolved way past that," Schultz says. "I'm helping people do things they haven't done since they had two good legs, and that's worth it right there."

Mike Schultz

Courtesy Fox

INVENTOR
Mike Schultz
COMPANY
Biodapt
INVENTION
Versa Foot
COST TO DEVELOP
$15,000
MATURITY
9/10

Cardboard Bike

One day in 2009, Israeli engineer Izhar Gafni sat in a quiet library designing a machine to extract seeds from pomegranates when his mind drifted to cycling, his favorite pastime. Gafni admired bikes made from sustainable bamboo, but their high cost seemed prohibitive. He wondered, Why not make them from cardboard, instead?
Over the next two years, Gafni learned to fold cardboard sheets into the strongest possible shapes; his experimentation led to robust structures resembling honeycombs and bird nests. He then spent another year crafting the material into bicycle components. "I almost felt like the Wright Brothers going into unknown territory," he says.
The product of his labor is a single-speed bicycle with spokes, rims, and a frame made from cardboard. Varnish protects the glued paper core from moisture, while old car tires serve as puncture-proof wheels. Gafni used a car's timing belt as a chain and formed plastic bottles into pedal cranks. The 28-pound prototype, called Alfa, can safely support a rider nearly 20 times its weight.
Gafni intends to mass produce four models: two 18-pound bikes for adults, assisted by optional rechargeable electric motors, and two smaller versions for children. He hopes to build each bike for less than $12 in materials and sell them for no more than $30. Through advertising plastered on each bike—or enough grant money—people in developing countries could ride them for free. Gafni can already envision fashioning his cardboard into baby strollers, wheelchairs, and even cars. "You can do almost anything with it," he says.

Cardboard Bike

Courtesy I.G. Cardboard Technologies

INVENTOR
Izhar Gafni
COMPANY
I.G. Cardboard Technologies
INVENTION
Alfa Bike
COST TO DEVELOP
$250,000
MATURITY
6/10

Fume Fighter

Within his first 30 minutes on the job at an aluminum factory in 1999, metalworker Michael Buckman inhaled so many noxious fumes he was sick with bronchitis for three days. As he recovered, Buckman wondered whether a commercial welding helmet could have filtered his breathing air. "I didn't see anything out there like what I was thinking about," he says. So he set out to build the WindMaker: a helmet that can prevent lung damage.
WindMaker draws fresh air from behind the helmet, pushes it through a HEPA-rated filter, and then blows it toward the front, cooling skin while preventing fog on the glass faceplate. A fan near the chin helps expel air, blowing away toxic smoke in the work zone. LED lights on each side of the faceplate illuminate the welding job, while a thick shroud deflects sparks.
Several companies have expressed interest in licensing the helmet. Before anyone can sell WindMaker, however, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health needs to extensively test its air-filtering abilities—a costly process that requires consumer-ready units. If the device lives up to its claims, the convenient combination of eye, heat, spark, and respiratory safeguards could motivate more welders to protect themselves, says Shawn Gibbs, an occupational health expert at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. "And that increased use is something welding needs," he says.
Buckman already has ideas for high-tech add-ons, including wireless communication devices, solar panels, video cameras, and heads-up displays. Whatever futuristic features make it into the final helmet, Buckman is confident it will deliver on safety. "I got hurt on the job," he says. "I had to go through that experience to design this."

Welding Helmet

Sam Kaplan

INVENTOR
Michael Buckman
COMPANY
None
INVENTION
WindMaker Helmet
COST TO DEVELOP
$200,000
MATURITY
8/10

Family Flier

John McGinnis thinks ordinary families would rather skip the airport and fly themselves. So he is trying to reinvent the personal airplane with the help of his father, son, and a rotating crew of about two dozen volunteers. Unlike small aircraft today—which can cost more than a house—McGinnis says Synergy could be cheaper, quieter, and, at more than 40 mpg, three times as fuel-efficient.
McGinnis, a 47-year-old composite manufacturer, flew his first airplane in second grade. Perplexed by the inefficiencies of personal aircraft, he taught himself aeronautical engineering and fluid dynamics over two decades. One day, while perusing scientific studies at a desk in his daughters' bedroom, he read a NASA researcher's paper challenging a classic aerodynamic drag equation. McGinnis could see the possibilities. "I came out of the girls' bedroom ranting like a madman to my wife," he says. " 'Honey, you're never going to believe this. I think I just solved a problem I've been working on since I was a little kid.'"
Synergy's wings bend upward and into a box shape for minimum drag and maximum efficiency. The top half of each wing swoops behind the body to function as a tail while providing greater in-flight stability. The double-box tail design also makes gliding easier by counteracting tornado-like vortices at the wings' tips. And instead of a front-mounted propeller, an impeller placed behind the bullet-shaped body quiets noise while adding thrust.

Synergy Illustration

Nick Kaloterakis

1) A 200hp turbodiesel engine expels heat below the impeller, adding thrust.
2) Large wings allow slower takeoffs and landings.
3) Box tails create airflow patterns that reduce drag and increase flight stability.
4) An autopilot computer can land Synergy at a nearby runway during an emergency; a ballistic parachute can also be deployed.

Scale Models

The McGinnis family—Pat, John, and Kyle—and pilot John Paul Noyes [front to back] stand in their Kalispell, Montana, workshop.

Kali McGinnis

McGinnis works on Synergy in his father's garage, where he uses CNC machines and custom molds to fabricate components and 3-D software to rapidly model new ideas. Family members serve among the core build crew, with McGinnis's son, Kyle, second-in-command. A quarter-scale prototype made from fiberglass, carbon fiber, and Kevlar suggests that both the team's manufacturing process and unusual wing configuration work. Using about $80,000 in crowdfunded cash, they hope to finish a full-scale, five-person aircraft this year. "I work on it 90 hours a week, with a few hours of sleep," McGinnis says. "What drives me to do it is that no one else will."
INVENTOR
John McGinnis
COMPANY
Synergy Aircraft
INVENTION
Synergy
COST TO DEVELOP
Undisclosed
MATURITY
2/10

Smart Ball

After an earthquake devastated Haiti in 2010, search-and-rescue teams descended upon Port-au-Prince to look for survivors. Francisco Aguilar, a graduate student in public policy at the time, was shocked to read stories about crews relying on complex, expensive imaging systems. "Only a few teams had them, and you had to be really well trained to use them," Aguilar says. He soon launched a start-up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to develop a simple way to explore hard-to-reach places: a throwable, expendable, baseball-size probe.
The Bounce Imaging Explorer has a shock-absorbing shell embedded with six cameras, plus clusters of near-infrared LEDs to light up dark rooms (for the cameras). To deploy the Explorer, an emergency worker links it to a smartphone or tablet and chucks the ball into danger. It immediately begins taking photos and testing for methane, carbon monoxide, and dangerously high temperatures. A microprocessor inside the ball then stiches the photos together and converts the raw data for transmission over Wi-Fi. Just seconds after the toss, a wrap-around panorama—complete with environmental warnings—appears on the synced device.
Aguilar quickly imagined applications beyond disaster areas, such as burning buildings, hostage crises, and combat zones, so he sought feedback from potential customers. His start-up cranked through dozens of prototypes in the first 18 months, tweaking the design as requests poured in. When several police officers said they wanted to be able to hear inside a room, for example, Aguilar added a digital microphone.
Police, firefighters, soldiers, and nuclear-plant inspectors have offered to test the device, which Aguilar is determined to keep between $500 and $1,000. "We want to get it as cheap as possible so it can be as broadly deployed as possible," he says.

The Bounce Imaging Explorer

Sam Kaplan

INVENTOR
Francisco Aguilar
COMPANY
Bounce Imaging
INVENTION
Bounce Imaging Explorer
COST TO DEVELOP
Undisclosed
MATURITY
7/10