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/2012
2012
AutoMicroFarm is like solar panels, but for your food.
What if you could grow 90% of the food essentials that your family needs--vegetables, fruits, fish, nuts, and beans--in an area the size of a two-car garage? What if that food kept you healthy and skinny?
My design will solve the problem of children drowning mainly in swimming pools. My design is better than other safety products on the market, because it takes the human factor out, from detecting a child drowning to bringing the child to the water’s surface, getting rid of any possibility of human error.
Need: Assist the blind and improve their lives by facilitation of their mobility both indoors and on the streets and sidewalks. Improve the safety, confidence, and overall well being of the totally blind, by means of a panel worn in front of the waist and suspended by the belt and shoulder straps, extending forward,
I can see the requirement spec now:
"I want to be able to search through a stack of 'stuff' on my PHYSICAL desktop without having to move papers around. Oh, and it would be nice if I didn't have to type anything, if voice input would work".
Say you have a rolltop desk with lots of pigeon-holes,
A Pair Push & Pull Thermal Dynamic Engines.
A super flat profile Linn's thermal engine panel, 1 sq-meter X 3" thick, consists of 2 sets ultra low temperature thermal dynamic engines configured as push and pull cranking mechanism to drive a micro electric generator on top. Its peak power output capacity is near 500 Watts per square meter,
This entry submits the use of the Landin Engine in aircraft use to replace the conventional turbine. The basic Landin Engine design was submitted in last year's contest, and can be seen here:
In aircraft use, multiple engine units are coupled together to achieve the necessary power output.
Currently the use of inconstant power sources, such as wind turbines, is needlessly expensive and "hi-tech." Turbine blades resemble airliner wings, and the turbines require transmissions, electric generators (with imported rare earths), and fancy electronics, etc. for phase matching to the electrical grid. The electrical power so generated cannot be stored.
There are many situations that require an absolute leak-proof seal of an air duct in a building. Pharmaceutical processing, laboratory research, manufacturing explosives, medical isolation, nuclear reactors, and many more applications exist.
However, today there is no absolutely leak-proof damper. All dampers leak a small amount. Furthermore,
The Proof Structural Design is intended to save lives from tornadoes. Less than 3% of America’s homes include storm shelters, and tornadoes are responsible for taking thousands of people’s lives. Each time a deadly tornado or storm system hits, homes and businesses are destroyed, and each time we rebuild them exactly as they were built before,
With up to 35% fuel saving and meeting ISO 50001 standards, this system would assist in power management of Heavy Truck tractor trailers.
1st) Solar panels are located on 3 sides of the boxed trailer to continuously charge onboard batteries, either stationary or in motion.
Page 15 of 74
