Patent

​There’s nary a Star Wars fan alive who hasn’t at some point swung a makeshift lightsaber around. A new patent awarded to Disney suggests that future visitors to Disneyland may get a more hands-on experience, using a physical lightsaber to deflect lasers fired at them by animatronic bad guys.

​City dwellers might like to drown out the world with noise-cancelling headphones, but some noises are better off not cancelled. Amazon has been awarded a patent for headphones that can recognize specific keywords, like the wearer’s name, and temporarily shut off the noise cancellation.

Google's autonomous cars have been out for years, and so far their track record for safety looks good. But even for the best robot drivers, accidents do happen, so Google has patented a creative safety feature: glueing pedestrians to cars.

A patent filing has surfaced showing a concept smartwatch interface from Samsung, designed to project a touch-enabled display onto the back of the user’s hand.

A patent filing by Sony reveals its vision for a contact lens that not only records video and photo with a simple blink, but manages to store them right there and then on the user's eyeballs.

Airbus has filed a US patent application for a new multi-fan jet engine design, which has the engine nacelles wrapping around the airplane's fuselage instead of suspended from the wing.

A recently-granted Airbus pantent explores the creation of a new modular aircraft that would see detachable passenger cabins slot into a gap in an aeroplane's fuselage. The concept has the potential to revolutionize air travel, while providing significant savings for airlines.

Boeing has been given a patent for a new kind of amphibious drone that's like something straight out of a classic spy movie. The aeronautics giant has a novel design for an unmanned aerial drone that can spontaneously convert into an unmanned submarine and go for a dive.

Airbus' Marco Prampolini and Yohann Coraboeuf have been granted a US patent for an "ultra-rapid air vehicle" designed to fly at 20 km (12.4 mi) higher than conventional aircraft and over four times the speed of sound – twice the speed of Concorde.

Honda's much-delayed NSX and tiny S660 have this year marked the firm’s first venture back into the world of mid-engined cars since the first-generation NSX and Beat of the 1990s – and these patents hint that there may be more to come.

Tesla grabbed the attention of the electric vehicle industry when it opened up its patents last year, and now it looks like this apparent altruism is inspiring others to follow suit. Ford has now opened up its EV patents to its competitors, though unlike Tesla's they won't come free of charge.

There’s been no secret that Maserati is working on an SUV derived from the Kubang concept of 2011 and now patent drawings that provide the first glimpse of the production car’s styling have surfaced.