Never Lose Your Car in a Lot Again!

Losing your car in a crowded parking lot is one of the most frustrating situations you can find yourself in. So we here at Patent Penders are calling for an iPhone application that can direct you to your parked car. Here’s how we see it working: After you park your car you open the parking application and hit the start button. After that you walk out of the lot or parking garage. Once you are outside the garage or lot you hit the stop button. The iPhone will have recorded the exact number of feet you have traveled, including the number of feet you traveled up or down (accounting for stairs in a parking garage). When you are returning to your car you simply open the application at the location where you previously stopped it, and you will receive detailed instructions that direct you to the exact spot your car is parked in.

HUD stands for Heads Up Display, and is commonly found in the cockpits of modern airplanes. We want to take this technology and apply it to everyday vehicles. In a car a HUD could save lives. It could post the speed limit of the current area and even outline the proper lane to be in… No more accidental drives down the wrong way of a one way street!  It could also highlight the lane you are in and provide a clear path down a dark and windy road. The HUD could also have radar detection capabilities (where legal) and even outline the police car from a significant distance away.

How to Keep Deer Away

One of the scariest things when driving is when you find yourself staring at a deer in your headlights as you are flying down the highway. There are millions of deer related accidents in the US every year; we need to get the deer off our main highways. That is why we have come up with the high frequency emitter, here’s how it works: The HFE will let out a high pitched noise inauditable to the human ear that will irratate and startle deer away. Emitters would be possitioned every half a mile or so on each side of the highway, and pointed in the direction of the woods. This invention could also be used by anyone looking to keep hungry deer away from their home gardens.

Nothing can hide with a night vision windshield

No we can’t get rid of our car headlights because we need other drivers to be able to see our car, but we could add some night vision to our windshield.  But not only would it be night vision, I want to throw in a little infared in the mix as well so we could see anything that gives off a heat signature like incoming deer or those people that seem to think running at midnight is a good idea.  So it does add a little more safety to your car, but it gives you some style points as well.  Sure, Shaq might have a TV on every seat in his car with DirecTV and a PS3… but he doesn’t have a windshield with infared and night vision.

Cloud computing for the car

I have several ideas for cloud computing, so I will separate them into several different parts, this of course being part 1.

First of all, I will define cloud computing.  This is just how I define it and not necessarily the only definition for it, many people define it differently and it is one of those things that nobody can seem to agree with.  The computer cloud, or cloud computing, is basically a virtual world where all servers, computers, etc are all connected and are able to dynamically exchange data.  The immediate advantage to this would be the ability to keep all storage (i.e. hard drives) in a remote location, therefore decreasing the size of computers and such.  You could potentially store all your files, contacts, music, images, videos, calendars, and so forth on your home server and remotely access it from anywhere in the world.  Just recently, have we seen several instances of this dream beginning to come to life.

So now I want to bring your car into the computer cloud.  I can see several uses for this like connecting your music library to your car so you alway have your music library on the go.  Or maybe downloading a map location to your car for your gps to store.  Streaming videos for your passengers to watch.  All of this is quite feasible with the computing cloud.

Not only could your computer transmit data to your car, but the car could also beam back data to the computer.  For example, if the radio has a catchy song that you want to download to your computer, how about pressing a button to purchase the song from Amazon (because iTunes costs $1.29 per song).

If you have any other great ideas, leave them in the comments section or go ahead and post to the blog by hitting the “Submit Your Ideas” button at the top or clicking here.

Automatic Driving Car

How nice would it be to have your car drive itself while you sit back and just relax.  Very nice, that is how nice it would be.  I’m not talking a car that drives on any road, I mean we have to take baby steps right?  I’m saying we get a car that can take control of the highways.  And this is how I would do it:

That orange line on the road in the picture above is magnetic paint that carries information about the road (ex. speed limit, slope, maybe how dry the road is, and so on).  I figure if the paint is able to be made, it should be easy to lay it out on our highways.  The car is fixed with a tiny sensor on the bottom that reads this paint, much like a magnetic strip on a credit card.  And that’s it!  Pretty simple.  As for turns and such, the magnetic strip will give the car the radius of curvature of the upcoming turn and so the car can turn appropriately.

If we did manage to master this technology, let’s get it on the neighborhood roads ASAP so nobody was to worry about getting a DUI.