The 2025 Contest is Now Open for Entries!
Submit your best new product ideas in any of seven categories for a chance at $25,000 USD and other great prizes. Here’s how to get started.
Help build a better tomorrow
Since Tech Briefs magazine launched the Create the Future Design contest in 2002 to recognize and reward engineering innovation, over 15,000 design ideas have been submitted by engineers, students, and entrepreneurs in more than 100 countries. Join the innovators who dared to dream big by entering your ideas today.
Read About All the 2024 Winning Inventions
Special Report spotlights the eight amazing winners in 2024 as well as honorable mentions in each category, plus the top ten most popular entries as voted by our community.
Click here to read moreA ‘Create the Future’ Winner Featured on ‘Here’s an Idea’
Spinal cord injury affects 17,000 Americans and 700,000 people worldwide each year. A research team at NeuroPair, Inc. won the Grand Prize in the 2023 Create the Future Design Contest for a revolutionary approach to spinal cord repair. In this Here’s an Idea podcast episode, Dr. Johannes Dapprich, NeuroPair’s CEO and founder, discusses their groundbreaking approach that addresses a critical need in the medical field, offering a fast and minimally invasive solution to a long-standing problem.
Listen nowThank you from our Sponsors
“At COMSOL, we are very excited to recognize innovators and their important work this year. We are grateful for the opportunity to support the Create the Future Design Contest, which is an excellent platform for designers to showcase their ideas and products in front of a worldwide audience. Best of luck to all participants!”
— Bernt Nilsson, Senior Vice President of Marketing, COMSOL, Inc.
“From our beginnings, Mouser has supported engineers, innovators and students. We are proud of our longstanding support for the Create the Future Design Contest and the many innovations it has inspired.”
— Kevin Hess, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Mouser Electronics
contest
Contest
Self-Winding Generator™
Patent No. US 7,127,886 B2
An energy storage spring, similar in nature to a self-winding watch's mainspring and fabricated from spring steel, stores the rotational energy captured and transferred from the facility's turbines.
Patent No. US 7,348,686 B2
Buoyancy belts™ and their respective reservoirs offset some of the effects of gravity, while simultaneously reducing the vibration associated with the rotors found in electric generators and turbines. The use of special coatings, such as those used on ocean-going vessels, enhances the buoyancy effect.
The bearings are relegated to being place holders,
Hollow Generator™
Patent No. US 7,843,099 B2
For installations where flows are regulated, the Hollow Hydroelectric Generator™ provides a more efficient and compact means for generating electricity than do other designs. The Hollow Hydroelectric Generator™ itself is an extension of the previously introduced Hollow Turbine,™ and is suitable to replace the existing turbine / rotors in conventional hydroelectric power plants,
Patent No. US 8,080,913 B2
Constructed from stainless steel or composite carbon fibers with a titanium veneer, this award winning turbine design effectively captures the kinetic energy available off our coastlines and inland waterways. As seen in this partial diagram, debris may safely pass through the center of the turbine, as well as over the dull blades themselves,
The Other Hydrogen Economy™ and 3D Precision Irrigation™ are competent means for supplying Renewable Water, Power, and Agriculture.™
The Other Hydrogen Economy™ uses renewable energy to extract hydrogen from seawater, or from other sources, via electrolysis and transforms it into electricity and potable water. This creates a micro-grid which may or may not connect to the regional grid.
Summary: Portable Bidets exist but suffer from extremely low operating pressure, less than 2 psi.
Line pressure in most homes is 50 t0 80 psi and that is a standard installed Bidet operating pressure.
This invention not only provides for complete portability to be used in any facility but operates above 50 psi for a more efficient cleansing procedure.
New Use for the Self-Winding Generator
Patent No. US 7,127,886 B2
In-A-Nutshell: solar-thermal energy is transformed into electricity and used to electrolyze ocean water into hydrogen that is later combined with atmospheric oxygen to provide potable water and electricity, and oxygen that provides a means of re-oxygenating ocean water for marine aquaculture sites.
This means of energy storage captures excess electric power from renewable sources, or from the grid, with an electric motor / generator and stores that energy with a mechanically connected energy storage spring. When the stored electric power is required,
Keyed BricksTM require no fasteners, no cement or no training. Keyed Bricks are a high-tech shell filled with low-tech recycled plastic waste that increases its strength. It is engineered for a decentralized manufacturing process using local resources. Keyed Bricks can build sustainable load-bearing structures for communities anywhere in the world.
This technology addresses some major problems.
A single Pivoting Axle mounted at each fore-and-aft end of an EV platform and controlled by a simple CPU enables it to accelerate, decelerate, steer, dampen and theoretically brake without resorting to any additional hardware components. It’s all controlled by software codes!
Page 163 of 993
