10 Awesome New Inventions You'll Never Hear About

• 10 Military Mind Control :   
  
                                                               
                                 
  
                                             The helmet used by the U.S.  military has changed dramatically over the years. In World War I, the M1917/M1917A1 helmets, also known as "Doughboy" or "dishpan" helmets, protected the heads of American infantrymen. They were replaced in 1941 by the M-1 "steelpot," the standard-issue helmet in World War II, the Korean conflict and throughout the Vietnam War. By the 1980s, U.S. military helmets had evolved into a one-piece structure composed of multiple layers of Kevlar 29 ballistic fiber.
  
• 9 Pencil Pusher :    
                                                 
  
     
  
                                                                                  U.S. businesses use about 21 million tons (19 million metric tons) of paper every year -- 175 pounds of paper for each American, according to the Clean Air Council. This has led to office recycling programs, "please think before you print" e-mail signatures and printers that offer double-sided printing. Now a trio of Chinese inventors hopes to add another device to the cubicle environment: the P&P Office Waste Paper Processor, which turns paper destined for recycling into pencils. The machine, looking a bit like a three-hole punch crossed with an electric pencil sharpener, was a finalist in the 2010 Lite-On Awards, an international competition that seeks to stimulate and nurture innovation
  

• 8 Perpetual Printing :                                                                                   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   Printing has come a long way since the computer landed on the desktop. First, there were daisy-wheel printers, then dot-matrix printers, then inkjet and laser printers. The problem with all of these output devices, of course, is that they require paper -- lots of it -- and expensive consumables, like toner. Why can't someone invent an inkless, tonerless printer that allows the operator to reuse paper?
  As it turns out, this isn't a new idea. Xerox has been working with so-called electronic paper since the 1970s. Its most promising solution is a type of paper called "Gyricon." A Gyricon sheet is a thin layer of transparent plastic containing millions of small oil-filled cavities. A two-colored bead is free to rotate inside each cavity. When a printer applies a voltage to the surface of the sheet, the beads rotate to present one colored side to the viewer, offering the ability to create text or pictures. The images will remain on the paper until it's fed through the printer once again.

                                   

• 7 Insect Assailants :
  
  
  
  
  Many people don't know it, but USPTO can apply a secrecy order to a patent if patent office staff and their military advisers think the idea could be used to threaten national security. Once the USPTO decides that a technology is no longer a threat, it can publish the patent and pave the way for commercialization. Some patents may remain cloaked under a secrecy order for one or two years; others languish for decades. More than 5,000 patents -- inventions we may never know or see -- currently have secrecy orders attached to them.
  
                                       
• 6 Seed Racer :
  
  
                                            

         
       Mercedes-Benz has been an innovator for decades. You can thank the German auto manufacturer for diesel andsupercharged engines on passenger cars, antilock brakes, electronic stability systems and more. But nothing could be more innovative than the BIOME concept car, unveiled at the Los Angeles Auto Show in November 2010. Here's how the official press release described the vehicle: "The Mercedes-Benz BIOME grows in a completely organic environment from seeds sown in a nursery. Out on the road the car emits pure oxygen, and at the end of its lifespan it can be simply composted or used as building material."

•  5   Body Armor With Built-in Stun Gun, Flashlight and Cameraphone Charger    :

• The Armstar Bodyguard 9XI-HD01 looks a bit like that scary black body armor that Christian Bale wears in the recent Batman movies. And it is kind of like that, actually.
  The Bodyguard, which was patented by a California inventor in 2007 under the title of "wearable shield and self-defense device," is designed to be a shield, a non-lethal weapon and a communications device all in one [source: Justia.com]. The flexible arm, which is armored with Kevlar and hard plastic, contains a rechargeable lithium battery pack that powers an "electronic deterrent" device built into the arm's artificial skin. All the user has to do is pull a pin, and an assailant who grabs his or her arm is going to get zapped with electricity. The Bodyguard is also equipped with a bright LED flashlight, an HD camera capable of transmitting pictures, and a charging slot into which an iPhone apparently fits nicely.
         
  
• 4 Bat Suit :
  
                 
   Have you ever wanted to leave the ground and soar like a bird -- or perhaps a bat? In January 2012, a Connecticut-based inventor was granted a patent for what the application describes as "a completely dynamic human powered flying suit" that is modeled after the bat's style of aviation. The inventor explains in the patent application that bats are fellow mammals and the flying creatures "most closely related to human beings."
  The device consists of a pair of strap-on batlike wings with rigid and non-rigid portions that can be manipulated by the wearer once aloft. Initially getting off the ground is a bit trickier: Unlikebats, who simply do what comes naturally, the wearer of the flying suit would have to be towed, or ride on a bicycle, skis or rollerblades down an incline and then assume a leaning-forward flying posture and leap into the air at the appropriate moment.
  
  
• 3 Portable Cat-toy Park :
  

                           

                   Comedian Steve Martin used to have a routine in which his pet cat figures out how to imitate his voice and orders $3,000 worth of cat toys from a mail-order company. The bit certainly resonated with cat owners, who know how easily felines can get into mischief when they're trying to alleviate boredom. In 2009, a New York-based inventor was granted a patent for one possible solution: a fold-up "cat toy park" equipped with a scratching post, a tunnel for crawling through, a hanging chew toy, and most ingeniously, a tube equipped with a fan that blows colored balls around a mesh tube, a game that's "devised to occupy one or more cats"

• 2 License Plate Flipper : 
  
  Remember James Bond's tricked-out Aston Martin in the 1964 movie "Goldfinger" -- the one equipped with hidden machine guns, pop-out razor rims to slice pursuer's tires and an ejector seat? Wouldn't you love to outfit your Toyota Yaris with some of that stuff?

The high-powered weaponry, alas, probably is a bit impractical, not to mention dangerous. But there is a company that offers an electronic license-plate flipper of the sort that Bond used to conceal his identity from prying eyes. The $79.00 Vehicle Plate Flipper doesn't allow you to impersonate a Swiss or French driver, but it does flip down at a 90 degree angle at the press of a button to display a message on an underlying plate for the driver behind you. There's also a special $74.99 version for motorcycles.

•  1  Robot That Devours Insects and Rodents :
  

At this point, robotic vacuum sweepers, singing androids and mechanical dogs are old hat. But British inventors Jimmy Loizeau and James Auger have made a quantum leap with the Carnivorous Domestic Entertainment Robot, an automaton that would stalk and devour mice and insects, and then eat them and digest their bodies to produce its own power.

They've come up with five different concepts, including the mousetrap coffee table robot, which is designed to lure unwary vermin onto its surface, which contains a trap door triggered by motion sensors. Rodent victims trapped by the device would be chemically dismantled and fed to a microbial fuel cell. A light on the side of the device would inform the owner of how much energy is being produced by the auto-extermination. Other configurations include the Lampshade Robot, which would lure flies and moths to their doom, a Cobweb Robot that would trick spiders into weaving webs and then extract and feed them into its fuel cell, and the Flypaper Robotic Clock