Thanks to the internet, just about anybody with oodles of spare time can access the American based USTPO (patent site) and find all kinds of weird and wonderful patents available showing off mankind's best and worst inventions. Ironically, most of these detailed and ambitiously designed patents will likely never see the light of day.
But sometimes it's the strangest patent offered by the unlikely company that delivers the best results. Take patent No. 07484451 for example. It's IBM's attempt at a superhero costume, or as we like to think of it as, a bionic body armour suit.
How it works:
The bionic armour suit works in conjunction with a bionic controller that uses an array of tiny muscular sensors, which are triggered when a bullet/projectile is launched. These essentially trigger a further series of sensors which pre-calculate the distance of the projectile, the wearer's location to this projectile and then guards against this projectile by sending a pulse of electromagnetic waves to reflect the bullets away from the wearer.
We can just imagine a special team of IBM researchers watching the Matrix and Iron Man films over and over again and then coming up with their own bullet dodging battle suit.
IBM appears to have their business interests vested in the VIP crowd: superhero armour would be particularly useful for assassination prone politicians, wealthy businesspeople and the odd African war-lord.
The suit is probably a long way from production, so superhero geeks might need to shelve those Dark Knight/masked crime fighter fantasies for now.
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| Image from patent |