3rd World Washing Machine

If you asked demographer Hans Rosling what invention the world's poorest people would like, that I could give from my house right now, he would answer in an instant one thing that personally changed his own family's life: The washing machine. Wait, what?

If for some reason you can't see the video, it's his lecture he gave to TED in which he describes how the washing machine changed his own family in surprising ways. Before, laundry was difficult work, thrust upon women against their will, that sucked up the better part of a day just to get clothing clean and dry. When this was mechanized, time was freed up for more important things, like education. The washing machine liberated women, and freed them up to improve things both for themselves and for the men in their life. Hans personally describes his rise to academia because his mother was freed up to tutor him.
Except, if I were to give the washing machine that I use to someone in the poorest part of the world, it would be a useless cube of steel from their perspective. They don't have running water. They don't have electrical connections, and when they do, those connections cannot be relied upon, as they often go out for weeks at a time. (Sometimes someone steals the copper, cutting the power, or the power gets cut for political reasons, or there's a strike at the power plant, which is then forced to shut down lest something get damaged while not maintained.) So...what to do?
Hack A Day reports that enterprising inventors have two designs for washing machines that can be operated with a bucket of water and hand-power, yet are far less laborous than the traditional fire-heated hand scrubbing. In one, the water, soap, and clothing is put into a barrel that resembles a water cooler. By repeatedly pushing a switch with one's foot, everything inside is spun around like a salad shooter, which causes all the soiled material to stick to the soap instead of the clothing:

The other option is a machine like a stationary bicycle connected to a barrel. The clothing, soap, and water goes into the barrel, the barrel is closed, then you pedal to agitate the clothing. And just like all the other machines, the frothing mixture makes the soiled material bind to the soap, which then comes out of the mixture:
Of the two options, I predict that the bicycle model will be more popular, as stationary bicycles are already a novelty in the poorest regions, where bicycles are an expensive but extremely useful form of transportation. A bicycle is like a walking multiplier -- The same effort makes you go farther and faster. No further investment is required after the bicycle, and what experience these people have shows them that bicycles can be fun.
In either case, an increase in the utility of human labor is surely a good thing.

Plasma Water Cleaning

Clean water is a major need in much of the world. While water is a very common commodity on Earth, drinkable water is much less so. Much of our water is unthinkably salty, polluted, or so swarming with disease-causing bacteria and viruses that drinking it will probably result in your death. In many parts of the world, half of one's day is spent obtaining clean water so that your family doesn't die. And even then, some very clear, very clean water can be infected, and you'd never know until everyone who drank it becomes unbearably sick. In Berkeley, scientists have developed a way to not only sterilize water, but make it actively kill bacteria and viruses for up to a week after treatment, allowing people to stockpile water. They do this all with low temperature plasma, the type that develops in a neon light sign, or those lightning-ball toys. It's cheaper so far than the traditional treatments for water, such as bleach, filtering, or UV light. This kills even drug-resistant bacteria, which could save thousands of lives. Plus, it's cheap. A metal rod and a few cents of electricity will clean a few gallons of water. Even if the average resident can't afford this, there are many charities that would very cheerfully provide it. The saved time will also improve lives, as Dr. Hans Rosling pointed out how the washing machine turned his native Sweden into a first world country. Why? With the time that his mother saved by not having to manually scrub the family's clothing, she was able to educate her children, work to increase her income, and generally make life better all around. Automation has clearly made everyone's lives better. With clean water, child mortality will go down, hygine will improve, there will be more time for education and productive work.

Ionization Theory

A common theory states that indoor air quality can be greatly improved by electrically charging the air. Air is accelerated over charged plates, imparting a charge to the air, which reportedly improves mood, causes bacteria, viruses, and dust to adhere to surfaces instead of becoming airborne, causes beneficial effects on the health of the people who breathe it, and even helps heal injuries. Some or all of these claims might be complete hogwash. One thing is definitely clear, though. Air ionizers create ozone, an oxygen variant that damages your lungs and is the major component in smog, although more useful in the upper atmosphere due it its tendency to neutralize harmful radiation.
The best evidence for the touted benefits of the theory was a study conducted in Bangkok, which showed that ionized air did improve rates of healing from injuries, and did in fact cause airborne bacteria to cease to be airborne, where it could be easily cleaned off the walls and floors that it stuck to. No mood difference was noted in participants. The data size was not large enough to be significant.
On the other hand, even if I assume this is all true, I would first worry about the ozone exposure. Fortunately, it is possible to filter out ozone using carbon-rich paper filters, and the ozone does kill all bacteria (and some viruses) while it is present.
So if this theory was true, the best air sources would be first ionized, then filtered (removing the dust, bacteria, viruses, and ozone), and then accelerated into the room. This also gives me a plan to experiment with this idea.
Get 3 groups of 30 people each. One group is put into a room in which the air is positively charged, filtered, then blown into the room. One group is put into a room in which the air is negatively charged, filtered, and then blown into the room. The last group is the control, and their air is not charged, but merely filtered. The filtering takes place some distance from the room so that it's not apparent which group you're in. The rooms are otherwise identical, and can support sleep, work, games, and eating. We have the group live there a period of time to be decided later. At the end of the period, we evaluate the groups for changes in health and mood, and we also measure bacteria concentrations in the rooms, walls, and floors.
If the theory is true, then I would expect that the positively charged room would be in better health than the control, which would be in better health than the negatively charged room, but that bacteria levels would be highest in the control room.

Central Vacuum

There is an existing system in which a building maintains a vacuum chamber, from which all air has been forcably removed. This leads to ports. connecting a hose to the port makes it work like a vacuum cleaner: material is forced into the hose with air pressure, about 14 pounds per square inch.
This may seem like a lot of work considering that vacuum cleaners already exist. However, with an average level of vacuuming, the chamber uses less energy, distributed through a longer period of time. It is easier to maintain, and several parts of the building can be cleaned at once. These advantages are promptly nullified if you do something like leave the ports open, which will require the vacuum system to run constantly.
Although this system already exists and can be found in all kinds of homes and businesses, I still think it's worth discussing.

Cleaning Electronics

You know what I hate? When dust or dirt gets into my computers. It's such a pain in the ass to clean.
Electronics such as computers generates heat from electrical resistance, and state-transition, while operating. This heat must be removed, for the continuing health of the computer. Usually, this is done with a small fan, which blows cool air over the hot electronics. The air takes the heat with it as it blows away.
However, this air brings with it dust. Meteor debris, fibers from my clothing, bits of my discarded skin and hair, and small bits of debris combine to form dust, an annoying and quasi-sticky grey substance. It smells. It has excellent thermal insulation, and it loves to stick to electronics. The more dust it has, the harder it is to keep cool. Damn it. So, periodically, the dust has to be removed. From small tight places that cannot be washed, because water plus electronics equals extremely bad short circuit.
I've typically been using a damp (not wet, damp) cotton swab, and a damp paper towel on larger areas, to take out the dust, then leave it off for an extra hour just to be sure it's dry. Most computer professionals prefer compressed air, which makes short work of all the dust in the computer in one fell swoop. (Though it's really bad for the fans, which get accelerated to ludicrous speeds.)
The strangest available solution is to make a fishtank computer, which is sealed and cannot possibly get dirty. Wait, what? One takes a fish tank, those little fishtank rocks, the computer parts, and several gallons of mineral oil. Arrange the computer parts in the tank, with the hard drive outside. The hard drive must be in air, because it has a pressure equalization mechanism that gets ruined if exposed to mineral oil, breaking down the entire drive. Unless it's an SSD, then it's okay. Make sure all the wires are connected, and turn it on to prove that it works. Then add the mineral oil. Your computer now appears to operate "underwater." The mineral oil works because it's as clear as water, but unlike water, it is chemically nonpolar, so it will not interfere with the operation of the computer.
For best results, an electronics expert should build "port repeaters" on the lid, so you can plug everything into the lid, which plugs into the computer below. And lo, it runs, and it cannot attract dust, and it vents all heat into the mineral oil, which the fans swirl around, and use the glass as one big heat sink. Also, it muffles all sound produced by the computer, eliminating that annnoying fan whirr.
One downside is that if the electronics ever have to come out of the mineral oil...they're covered in mineral oil, and rather icky to the touch.
Readers: How would you clean electronics? Mind you, wet electronics will insantly short circuit if switched on, so water (and other polar chemicals) should be avoided at all costs.

Cotton Cleanup

Large animal farms often pollute the area around them in a very ironic way -- they overfill the land with plant-nutrients. The trees turn neon green and the excess leeches into the waterways, causing algal blooms and bad smells.
On the other hand, some crops, particularly Cotton and Tobacco, have been particularly famous through farming history for needing quite a lot of these resources. I think we can use one to solve the other.
In an abandoned animal farm, grow quite a lot of Nitrogen-needy plants. They will absorb the pollution. Do not make cigarettes/textiles out of them, as they're probably infected with all kinds of heavy metals and bacteria to be trusted near humans. The crops can be chemically separated into any useful components.
Nearby trees should indicate the nitrogen-balance of the soil. When their leaves change from an unhealthy-looking neon-green to a lush summer-green, this indicates that the soil is now ready for conventional agriculture. Before that, the soil should test free of heavy-metal contaminants (which we will test for chemically), and then we can turn the farm over to a farmer of some kind.

Mobile Animal Trap

We humans develop colonies of animals at the periphery of our civilization. Mice and Rats seek out our food stores for a free meal. Predators of mice and rats do the same for the same reason: easy food. Next thing you know, you have a very large, complex, and frankly annoying food web of animals that you constantly trip over. Also, the mice and rats have "fun" diseases that infect us. For our health, we have to nip this in the bud.
The best solution would be to quickly kill off the mice and rats, but we're squeamish. So most pest-control works by trapping. The animal is lured into one of many cages, which must be periodically checked for the presence of an animal. And when one is found, it should be removed from the cage, followed by removing it from the area. (Some animals, like skunks, are more useful elsewhere. Others, like the mice or rats, probably need to be killed off.)
I saw an episode of "Dirty Jobs," Mike Rowe's little show where he does many of the strange professions that people do for a day, and in this episode, he was a trapper, joining a professional trapper in checking all the cages. Some were empty, some had badgers, racoons, and skunks in them. The cages all had to be emptied by hand. As I was watching this, it struck me that this is fairly inefficient of the trapper's time. Therefore, it should be automated.
I have an idea of putting the cage on wheels. The cage has a small weight-trigger, and when the animal is inside it and inadvertently activates the trigger, the cage puts down the wheels and rolls itself over to a larger centralized holding area, which it would find by GPS signal. Once there, it would deposit the animal, run through a cleaning area to wash off anything the animal left behind, obtain a fresh bait, and roll over to its original location. Then the wheels would be taken back up, and the trap would be fully reset, ready for trapping a new animal.
The trapper's job would now consist of handling the animals in centralized holding, and deploying new traps. Much simpler. The decrease in workload should be offset by trapping way more areas, as the more pest control can be handled, the better.

Oceanic Plastic Cleanup

Discovery News is reporting that a bacteria colony has evolved the ability to consume plastic. This is excellent news.
In the pacific ocean, floating swarms of plastic have become a severe problem. An enormous swath of floating discarded plastic has reached twice the size of Texas, and roams around the ocean. In the affected areas, sure the ocean looks blue, but if you ran a plankton net through it, you'd get a whole bunch of plastic for your trouble. This is proving problematic for filter feeding albatrosses, who get large amounts of plastic in their diet. They have been turning up dead on the pacific's many small islands, their digestive systems clogged with loads and loads of plastic garbage. The garbage becomes apparent when the bird dies.
If these microorganisms could be bred to handle to the greater salinity of the open ocean, then we could deploy them in colonies in the middle of the patch, and the patch would quickly be consumed, leaving the water pure. If the plastic ran out, probably the microorganisms would die off and sink to the bottom.

Wallbot

Due to a recent moth infestation that we've been vigorously fighting, the walls in my house have little stains on them. This is, needless to say, annoying.
I'll probably wipe it up with cleaning sprays and towels, but I'm not the only one to have this problem. I understand that parents often have children who either inadvertently throw food at the wall, or doodle on it with crayons. So, how can I clean the walls more...automatically?
I suppose the best way I can think of is to take the "Roomba" approach and have a robot. The robot would wheel itself alone the walls, sliding up and down on metal supports, scrubbing grime from the walls, sucking the soap and absorbed dirt into a special container, and periodically leaving the walls to go dump its bin into a nearby sink.
I think people will really like this. iRobot's robotic vacuuming machine, the aformentioned Roomba, is so popular that people treat it not as an appliance, but as a pet. People will actually sweep their floors for their robot so it doesn't have to "work" as hard. Which, mind you, it is a robot. It at worst does not care, and at best could be said to actively enjoy cleaning.
You could write entire psychology books on that topic.

Alternative Shower

Every day, I take a shower to get clean. Sometimes two if I'm working hard. This uses a surprising amount of water. With more and more of the country facing drought, there must be another way.
Well, one way would be to recycle and purify the water. It's been done, so I'm off to the crazier methods.
How about I copy the space program, and have a cleansing foam sprayed onto me, and then vacuumed off? It would use no water at all, and in theory the foam should be recyclable. Waste that it pulls off of me could go straight into a garbage can for easy disposal. Or, alternatively to that, an incinerator. Easy fuel source.

Nanotoothpaste

The first ingredient in common toothpaste, an important part of many people's dental hygiene, is silica gel. Basically, sand. It rubs away on the various things stuck to your teeth so that bacteria cannot establish a hold.
But hey, this is 2010. How about a more sophisticated solution?
A new kind of toothpaste would contain short-lived nanobots that would seek out and destroy bacteria, and collect sucrose and loose fats and proteins. That and a small amount of "wintergreen oil" to give the user's breath minty fresh.
I'm not sure how it would distinguish between a chunk of meat stuck between the user's teeth and their gums, other than not making it strong enough to lift something more than a gram. If it's too heavy, it's probably part of you.
I also specify short-lived just in case the programming malfunctions and it tries to do something strange to your mouth. If it's short lived, one can wait until they die off. Otherwise, you'd have to send more nano to stop the original nano, and the same problem recurses its way to absolute ludicrousness.

Supercritical Laundry

Decaffeinated coffee works due to a discovery of phase changes in chemistry. Namely, very hot and very high pressure gases reach a state in which it no longer behaves as a liquid or a gas, but as a strange combination of both, capable of oozing through even solid materials. This phase is called "supercritical," because it occurs when a material is pressured and heated beyond a "critical point" that all materials have.
To decaffeinate coffee, the beans have supercritical carbon dioxide poured on them. The carbon dioxide can seep through the solid beans, and leeches the caffeine from within. After this, the pressure is removed, and the carbon dioxide evaporates as a gas. The caffeine is left at the bottom of the container as crystals, and the beans are ground into coffee. Coffee that has very little caffeine. More than none, but not enough to give a drinker even a slight buzz.
So, I was thinking, how about doing this with laundry? First a supercritical carbon dioxide bath, then a supercritical steam bath. Any oils, dirt, dust, or stains would be leeched from the clothes, and be deposited at the bottom of the container. Neither component pollutes when released (beyond how it came to be in the first place, but that's another story), and fewer resources are required than traditional washing. Also, the clothes are dried within 30 seconds, an advantage for quick turnaround. Sure, one would periodically have to clean the container, lest the oils build up until they immediately re-soil the clothes, but this should be a fairly trivial task if done regularly.
Unfortunately for me, somebody came up with this idea first, and patented it. So if I, or you, or someone else, were to build this, you would have to pay the holder money. Up until it expires in October of 2012.
In the meantime, I'll just have to supercritically clean other things, like perhaps my car, or my dishware, or bottles at the factory.

Duster Screen

A TV Screen tends to attract dust due to being ionically charged. This is annoying for those who watch -- the more they watch, the more the dust clouds up the picture. This is a slight relief for those who have the dusting, since dust that lands on the TV screen doesn't land on the more irregular, and more difficult to dust, surfaces.
I'm envisioning a strongly ionically charged wand that attracts most of the dust in a house, and is easy to clean with a rag, and an ionically charged duster, that sucks the dust up as if by vacuum. Oh yeah, nice and clean.

Of Toilets and Hygiene

Did you know that nearly half the world's population has no access to a toilet of any kind and has to relieve themselves of their bowels and bladders by squatting in a field?
I'd laugh, but I'd be a hypocrite. A mere four generations ago, my great grandfather is on record as refusing to allow a toilet in his house, on the grounds that toilets inherently smell (as the outhouse that he used did), and that having it in the house would stink up the entire house.
But, as the article shows, many people lack even that. They have a bucket, that they empty into a field while no one's watching, or worse, have to squat in the field and hope no one bothers them in the process. Not good for hygiene (that field is going to stink) or health (bandits are a problem in these kinds of countries -- it wouldn't surprise me if they learned to harass people in the field, so to speak) or the environment (these fields are often very close to rivers, or even in them). Ick.
Apparently a number of charities are working hard to dig outhouses, the kind my great grandfather used, in these places so that people will have a safe, clean (if unbearably stinky), non-polluting place to do their business, and this makes a major difference.
Bonus if this also somehow fertilizes the nearby farms. (I've heard mixed reviews as to if that would work.)

Dust Reduction

Dust is an annoying, grey substance that builds up where you live, but is electrostaticly attracted to screens and electronics. I hate it. It makes the house smell stale, it gums up the cooling fans, it gets stuck where it's hard to clean, and I can never get all of it. What the hell is that crap, anyway?
Dust varies from place to place, but it almost always contains skin cells and hairs from you, textile fibers from your clothing, and cosmic debris filtered down to tiny particles by the atmosphere. Whereupon it coats every surface, especially the electrically charged ones.
When it's really important to keep out dust, clean rooms are invented. The room is totally sealed, then over pressured with known-clean air. If any leaks develop, air blasts through it, repulsing any dust that seeks to come in. To stay that way, all humans in the area have to wear bunny suits so as to not contribute to the problem.
Okay, but that costs a pretty penny. What's a cheaper way to keep my dwelling free of that grey crap?
Two words: Air Flow. Have a (ludicrous) fan suck air through a filter, and blast it through every room. The dust would be trapped in the filter, so I'd never have to dust again. I would, however, have to frequently change the filter.
(My house does in fact have a central air system fed by a filtered-intake, and it does in fact trap a large amount of dust. Doesn't stop more from evading it, grumble grumble.)

Cleaning my keyboard

One of the things I love the best about my keyboard is the way that the interior parts are connected, allowing me to dismantle it for cleaning. Keyboards tend to get nasty over time, as they are constantly touched, and have lots of crevices where spilled things remain until cleaned. Also, pets find them fascinating. A strange object! And the boss keeps messing with it! I should mess with it too! Which results in "pet typing." It looks like this:

rttatoitoiupppppoituuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuoooooooooooooo;
;l;;;;;;;;;'
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Also, the pets are responsible for many of the spills. Knock the boss's drinking glass over? Sure, why not? Maybe you'll get a sip of soda out of it.
So, my keyboard. I can take it apart like so:

Then I can take the outer shell and just chuck it in the bathtub with some soap. I used washing detergent.

Soap, swishing, and flipping, done repeatedly, knocks all the hair and dirt and cola and whatnot from the keyboard. Once it's clean, drain the bathtub, and take it somewhere to dry. I used my bed.

You have to let it dry totally, as water is a polar molecule and will interfere with the proper functioning of electronics. Once it's totally dry, put the keyboard back together.

The best part of doing this is that if I mess up, keyboards are $5 to replace. I suggest against doing this with any other part of your computer.

Auto Clean Bathroom

If there's one thing modern people all have in common, it's that they all loathe to do housework and yet feel it's necessary, because nobody likes a filthy, disorganized living space. So I'm starting automation plans so that it gets done for you and you can do more important things, like your job, your hobbies, raising any children you have, or maybe finishing that great work of yours.

The bathroom is a room of entirely fixed features. There's a toilet to dispose of waste, a bathtub or shower to clean off one's body, and a sink for hand washing. All of these tend to collect the filth they remove from your body and periodically need to be cleaned, a nasty chore frequently mentioned in rants about how people hate housework.

Since none of these move, and cleaning consists of the exact same motions every time, automation is fairly straight forward. Robotic arms attached to the ceiling can, on a cue or timed signal, lower a scrubbing brush with a cleaning-solution squirter, squirt solution, scrub, and flush away. Human maintenance would only involve installing the system, setting up the cue (Press button to clean, or "Run every day at 3am"), and refilling the cleaning solution tanks. The brushes should also be interchangeable, as they wear out with use. They will need to be replaced when that happens.

The toilet's cleaner consists of a squirting nozzle and a brush. Squirt solution on the side of the bowl, then swirl the brush down the around and down the bowl until it reaches the bottom. Then flush. The toilet is now clean. Raise this arm back into the storage position.

The tub's cleaner first has to slightly wet the tub, in case it's dry, then lay down a bleach powder. It should wait about 5 to 10 minutes, then lower a brush arm, and scrub the powder around. It should then rinse the powder off, whereupon it will take away all the dried soap and dirt with it. Then store the scrubber heads.

Sinks would consist of a similar treatment to the tub, but less extensive and with a shorter waiting time.

Lastly, the tub should have a plughole cleaner, because people often lose hairs while showering without noticing. (At any given time, 90% of your hair is growing and 10% is falling out and being replaced with a new hair.) Removing these hairs often gets quite disgusting, as the hair is wet and dried repeatedly before the user notices. By the time it's cleaned, the hair is a vile smelling, soggy mess. Yuck.

For best results, the shower should be seal-able, as this allows the user to enjoy a hot shower with less hot water, doesn't steam up any nearby mirrors, and prevents mildew from forming.

Washing up, The Mad Engineering Way

I've always disliked doing laundry, because for the longest time I didn't know how to do it right and would wind up with soapy, bleach stained clothes.

Well, we have a saying in the engineering department, "Work is good, but drudgery is evil." Meaning that it's good to work very hard on interesting problems, and if a problem isn't interesting, you should work a thousand times harder to automate it so you never, ever, ever have to do it again.

Okay, so what tasks are involved in laundry? In the ancient past, this would involve boiling water, cutting soap into it, adding the clothes, scrubbing until clean, draining the water, and hanging the clothes outside until they dried. If the clothes were white, there was chlorine bleach that would make it even whiter, but if it was added to colored clothing, it would...make it white. Anyway, this whole process was deemed to be a royal pain in the ass.

So the washing machine was invented. Selecting washing time, load size, and water temperature from a handy gage, I can then put the clothes into the machine, add some detergent, pull the knob to start, and come back in about an hour to washed clothes. Similarly, there is a drying machine that blows hot air into a motorized drum, and if I put my clothes in it, select the time and temperature (some clothes will be damaged if the air is too hot), and pull the knob, it will dry my clothes, at which point I can fold them and put them away.

Unfortunately, this too has some problems. I can't readily determine if my load is "large" or "medium," and often wasted water with too large a selection, or not enough (and would have to wash again.) I used to add too much soap because I wasn't sure how much to use. And worst of all, if I had run a white load before, the machine often had spots where a bit of bleach remained, behind the drum where I couldn't see it. If I put my clothes in before the water filled, it would make a little white blotch on my nice clothes.

My idea was also influenced by an invention I saw for sale at the appliance store: A combination washer/dryer. This eliminates the need to transfer the clothes between the two.

So my ultimate wash idea is a hamper, that drops into a washing machine with a scale and a sophisticated computer. The hamper backs up until the washing machine has a "full" load, determined by the scale, at which point all the clothes are added, along with a dose of soap. A separate hamper would be required for bleach loads. Sensors could detect the soil-level and adjust the amount of soap and/or bleach. Using the combined wash/dry technology, the clothes would also be dried here, and ejected into a clean bin.

Automatic folding and putting away of the clothes will have to wait for the invention of robotic butlers.