New Inventors Grand Final

It’s a black tie, one hour event tonight for the Grand Final of The New Inventors.

James O’Loghlin introduces the final five contenders who topped 120 inventions this year.

One will be named ‘Invention of the Year’ and win a suite of prizes from IP Australia, CSIRO, AusIndustry and Austrade. The prizes equate to a full life cycle of benefits for the invention – everything from lab testing, training in patents and intellectual property, marketing advice, assistance in developing the business in Australia and launching the product onto world markets.

A ‘Bright Spark Award’ goes to the most outstanding inventor aged 18 years or younger. The ‘Les Is More Award’ will be presented to an inventor whose invention is motivated by their desire to create something that helps others or the environment and the ‘People’s Choice Award’ is voted by viewers.

Judging the final five will be regular panellists James Bradfield Moody, Bernie Hobbs and Sally Dominguez.

The five finalists are:

SAFETY PROPELLER – by inventor Colin Chamberlain from Mackay, QLD. On an average boat, a three blade propeller can inflict up to 160 impacts in one second. If you get any part of your body in the way you can be cut to pieces. The Safety Propeller is a new propeller that will not injure or kill people or marine life. It is almost identical to regular propellers in its construction, and performs equally well, but a crucial design variation allows a person to stick their limbs directly into the propeller’s way without any harm.

PASSWINDOW – by inventor Matthew Walker from Brisbane, QLD. Australians lost more than half a billion dollars in credit card fraud last year, much of it online. PassWindow is a visual authentication system that increases safety by giving the user a unique personal identification number (PIN) every time. The invention uses a custom pattern printed on a transparent window on a credit card. When the card is held to a computer screen, the design combines with an on-screen pattern to form a four to six digit PIN. By generating a new unique code every time the user is online, it ensures that access can only be granted to the genuine cardholder.

INTELLIGENT PLASTIC – by inventors Bob Holland and Paul Brockwell from Coffs Harbour, NSW. Intelligent Plastic has been designed to take the guesswork out of food freshness. The invention is a low cost sensor label that can be incorporated into any packaging or product. It works by measuring the chemicals consumed or produced by food as it changes. Intelligent Plastic can measure freshness, toxicity, health risk, benefit or diagnostic assessment and can be calibrated to match most foods.

MYCROLAB – by inventor Micah Atkin from Melbourne, VIC. Ordinary blood, urine and sputum tests normally take days to get results back. This delay can cause life-threatening problems for people in developing nations where they have travelled long distances to have the tests done, and sometimes become too ill to return for treatment. MycroLab is a miniature laboratory that can perform multiple tests on a drop of blood, urine or sputum. The user places a specific card into the device and adds a drop of the fluid to be tested. This tiny sample is pumped around the device, where it interacts with reagents on the card in a tightly controlled and miniaturised version of laboratory testing.

CIRCUITS IN PLASTIC – by inventors David Thiel and Madhusudanrao Neeli from Brisbane, QLD. The UN estimates that 50 million tonnes of electronic waste can be prevented from going to landfill and making e-waste disposal a major issue. Circuits in Plastic is a new method of electronics manufacture for circuits and systems. The circuit ‘board’ is a plastic sheet, with components placed in divots within the sheet. The conductor is screen printed onto a thin cover sheet which is then thermally bonded to the circuit board. The circuit is waterproof, and can be made entirely from recycled plastic.

It airs at 8pm tonight on ABC1.