It's an easy mistake to make -- looking to the world's tech giants to produce the next big innovations that are going to change the world. In fact truly transformative ideas don't require money, experience or futuristic white campuses packed with glistening research labs.
Testament to this are four young engineers from the UK who have just been shortlisted by the Royal Academy of Engineering's Launchpad Competition for their own innovative thinking, which has resulted in some remarkable and thoughtful pieces of tech.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about their products -- a biodegradable tent, an inflatable incubator for premature babies, a magnetic gas monitor, and a medical device that could revolutionise kidney dialysis -- is that they all have the potential to make the world a better place, despite the fact that this was not a stipulation of the competition.
Designed by 23-year-old Amanda Campbell, this biodegradable tent has been designed to solve a major waste problem. In the UK alone more than 100,000 abandoned tents, which equates to 200 tonnes of rubbish, go into landfill sites sites every summer following festival season.
Comp-A-Tent is a fully compostable tent built from cellulose fibres and plastics, which can biodegrade within 10 days. It is fully rain resistant, lightweight and very cheap to produce.
The fact that it degrades not only reduces the environmental burden in terms of ending up in landfill, it also means it can be disposed of onsite alongside food waste.
Gas-Sense wireless gas monitoring
19-year-old George Edwards first became aware of the problem of global gas wastage at school when it was explained to him by a caravan-owning teacher. As part of a coursework project he then designed and developed a magnetic strip that can be attached to any gas bottle and send data about gas consumption in real time to a smartphone app.
The app is capable of predicting how much gas will be required for journeys and can alert user if the gas has been left on by mistake. By capturing location-specific data, the app can also let major gas suppliers help direct users to nearby stores when they are running low.
The Royal Academy of Engineering isn't alone in picking up on the potential for the technology -- Edwards has received an order of 450,000 units from a major supermarket and has received backing from Richard Branson.
Inflatable incubators for the developing world
WIRED first reported on James Roberts' inflatable incubator, designed to reduce the number of premature baby deaths in the developing world, when it was awarded the James Dyson Award in November 2014.
The product was designed while Roberts, 23, was a design and technology student at Loughborough University and saw a documentary about the number of babies that die unnecessarily due to the lack of something as simple as incubation.
The incubators he has designed can be flat-packed down for easy storage and powered for 24 hours by a car battery. It costs a mere thirtieth of the price of traditional incubators, making it a viable solution both for the mass market and the developing world.
Revolutionising kidney dialysis
Receiving dialysis is something that 27,000 people in the UK and 2.5 million routinely experience, and something that currently relies on invasive surgery and can result in serious complications.
25-year-old Sorin Popa has developed a technique that could allow patients who require lifelong dialysis to receive it without ever having to go under the knife. "We have developed a novel catheter system that enables any one of a variety of currently available stent grafts to be used to connect two blood vessels in the arm, forming the 'vascular access site' necessary for dialysis. This has never been attempted before and has the potential to eliminate the need for dialysis patients to undergo invasive surgery," Popa explained to WIRED.
It's possible that one day the technology could also one day be used as an alternative to open-heart surgery for coronary bypass operations.
All four finalists of the competition have now been invited to join the Academy's Enterprise Hub and will receive mentoring from major business figures and a lead angel investor. "This year's finalists are testament to the fantastic ideas that the younger generation is capable of generating. Our panel has seen ground-breaking ideas from 16-25-year-olds with the potential to save lives, transform the leisure and tourism industry, aid the developing world and lower our carbon footprint," says Ian Shott, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. "We believe that these innovations have mass-market potential and we aim to utilise the Academy's world-class mentors and business networks to help bring them to market and make them future UK success stories."
A final winner will be chosen at an event on 29 September and will be receive the JC Gammon Award -- a trophy and £15,000.