2024 Contest Now Accepting Entries!

Submit your best new product ideas for a chance at $25,000, other great prizes, and global recognition. If you already are registered, log in to access the entry form. Otherwise, click here 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 across six continents. You can also join the innovators who dared to dream big and build a better tomorrow by entering this year’s contest.

Read About Past Winners’ Success Stories

Over the past 20 years, many innovators have used the recognition afforded by the contest to advance the development and marketing of their technologies. We highlight some success stories of past winners who have brought their inventions to the marketplace.

Click here to read more

A ‘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.

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Thank 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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A Home and Small Business Electricity Micro Generation Unit

Votes: 0
Views: 7178

Primarily aimed at the domestic and SME market, Senical Ltd has designed a micro-generation unit with modular components allowing these components to be “swapped out” to maximize the usage of natural resources with minimum footprint. The main housing has an interchangeable top component which can be either a solar collection unit, a wood burning unit or a barbeque. The housing also hosts two removable vertical axis wind turbines and two internal sterling engines driven by the temperature differentials captured by the ground and top components. The unit also has its own internal power storage unit.

As a stand-alone unit, the benefit is energy offset; however, the unit is designed to be scalable by having interconnectivity capabilities. The vision for individual consumers is for them to be able to install multiple units to become energy self-sufficient, and for neighbourhoods and communities it is to enable the creation of ‘social energy networks’ by sharing resources and stored power. This scalability allows decreased reliance on non-sustainable resources and fossil fuels thus reducing individual & community CO2 output.

The device is designed in such a way that it becomes ‘garden furniture’ as opposed to comparable intrusive technologies. Consumers can choose from a verity of designs and ‘fashionable’ looks to blend in with their chosen lifestyle. A major benefit of the system is the rapid return on investment compared to the inhibitive cost and installation of competing technologies such as solar panels and ground source heat pumps. The portability of the unit also means it can be moved and removed simply and taken and installed into a new home or premises.

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  • ABOUT THE ENTRANT

  • Name:
    Steve Nicoll
  • Type of entry:
    team
    Team members:
    Steve Callaghan
    Roy Hope
    Steve Nicoll
  • Software used for this entry:
    Solid Works
  • Patent status:
    pending