Congratulations to Our 2025 Grand Prize and First Place Winners!
Imersiv, a breakthrough technology that improves audio performance by 100X compared to today’s very best audio equipment for applications ranging from sound engineering to space missions to medical imaging, was named the $25,000 grand prize winner at a live finalist round held November 7 in New York. Click here for the full list of winners. Also see the Top 100 highest scoring entries. Special thanks to our esteemed panel of judges.
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 16,000 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 in our 2026 contest opening March 1.
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
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Contest
The present configuration of traffic lights represents a very real hazard to pedestrians as the entire traffic light setup is totally configured for auto traffic and absolutely no regard is given to pedestrian safety.
Hologram Phone (HPhone) is a communication device that projects real-time 3-D images between users.
Overview:
The HPhone utilizes advanced laser and satellite technologies which results in an exciting future of futuristic telecommunications. "Live," absolutely precise, three-dimensional 3-D images of users are move and react with one another.
LED replacements for four foot T8 fluorescent lamps have a energy saving of about 35%. By adding a wireless or power line networking electronics directly into the tube additional energy savings can be accomplished, via dimming or selectively turning off individual tubes per fixture. Upwards of 85% total energy savings can be accomplished using these technique.
Applying supersonic counter-?owing cold gas jets of a certain mass flow rate and pressure at the nose of a supersonic vehicle can reduce drag, aerodynamic heating and possibly reshape sonic boom signatures.
The ID Digital Camera is a device that law enforcement can use to automatically ID "persons of interest" in the vicinity by matching the image on their viewfinder to the police database of felons or victims (mug shots)on file.
Typical temperature compensation techniques for wireless communications add ~$1 per oscillator, reduces battery life and reliability. Based on current experiments and patents granted, we can establish tighter frequency control while removing the added cost and complexity in the circuitry commonly used in cellular and other wireless applications. By adjusting the quarts cut away from the AT angle area,
The "White Glove Seeing Eye Phone": Use multiple proximity (ultra-sound and optical) sensors and high end imaging processing, to detect traffic, lights, obstacles, people, and gestures, so that a Visually Impaired (VI) person can get around safely. GPS features to allow the VI to navigate, as well as report where they are when they need help.
Typical wind power generation farms are capable of producing large amounts of energy to be distributed throughout a wide network or to generate enough power for a community, but they are not at the scale and portability needed by organizations such as the military, contractors, farmers, ranchers and other organizations that require portable and/ or inconspicuous wind generators.
Anderson Aerospace LLC has developed a new compact microwave antenna technology that offers improvements over existing satellite television and broadband communications systems for aircraft in flight.
Typically, dish style antennas are 50% efficient. The most efficient system currently on the market can have as high as a 75% efficiency. Our direct wave design is 80% to 85% efficient.
This is my concept of a "purely for fun" sea plane. Designed for open-air fun around the lake, it will be the aviation equivalent of a jet-ski. Use of much carbon fiber, spars of prefabricated carbon pultrusions, 100 h.p. pusher engine, and floats with conventional (4-wheel) retractable gear.
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