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/2014
2014
The aerospace industry has been searching for methods for 3D printing with metals, however it's something yet too far. The Mold3d technology comes to circumvent this problem by transforming printed plastic parts into injected metal parts ready for use, without any decrease in resolution and quality.
The ‘RHAT Bike’ is the world's first folding, reconfigurable and lightest full size motorcycle system in history. In the 1900's motorcycle were glorified bicycles but when the two camps split, bicycles became stronger and motorcycles became heavier. For the past 100 years this has left an unexplored middle ground,
This design is to use a standard powder feeder that is available from sources such as Praxair or Thermach. It uses a pulsed laser to melt powder and feedback to determine the state of the melt puddle. The feedback is from an optical pyrometer that has a mechanical shutter to protect it from the laser,
INFLASOLE™ also known as “Inflatable Insoles” or “Adjustable Comfort Insole” is removable shoe inserts/orthotics with a miniature air-pump and relief-valve assembly built-in underneath arch pillow, so wearers can adjust air-pressure, the softness of the insoles, according wearers weight and activities, such as: Standing, Walking, Running, Sports, etc.
Athletes who use INFLASOLE™
The recognition drone for inaccessible areas was designed to help in the maintenance of areas with poor accessibility to humans, reducing the costs and riskiness, making it perfect for maintenance, monitoring and strategic planning operations in hazardous areas.
The Problem:
Within the LADAR marketplace & Laser Scanner systems today, there are not any low cost, real time and high accuracy LADAR (LAser Detection And Ranging) laser scanner systems. This MKS LADAR Project is created to solve this Problem. A LADAR laser scanning system would revolutionize the way humans and electronic and computer systems would interact,
Production of Nanoscale Pores & Slits for Applications Such as Filters, Masks, and Particle Counters
Problem
There is a need for nanoscale pores and slits for nanotechnology medical and research applications that cannot be produced using even state of the art lithography and etch technology. More specifically, pores and slits with dimensions down to less than 10 nanometers cannot be made reproducibly with full tunable control. Consequently,
Problem:
India is a nation renowned for its street-food and Paanipuri is one of those delicacies which attracts every Indian. However, lack of hygiene of Indian vendors remains a major concern with this mouth-watering dish. While the number of cases of typhoid, jaundice, cholera and gastrointestinal diseases remain high, the attraction for this dish never dies off.
After the disappearance of an airliner in midair earlier this year, ICAO organized an exclusive Special Meeting on Global Flight Tracking of Aircraft: “Meeting participants will explore the use of existing technologies that may provide the means to support globally track airline flights at a reasonable cost.”
The Speedblock promises to end traffic fines on roads with radars and speed limits, increasing the driver's attention on the street and reducing time lost looking at the speedometer, thus avoiding accidents. Currently, only the most expensive cars have a speed locking system and doesn't have much interactivity with the user. However, with the Speedblock you can adjust,
Page 4 of 83
