Laser Windscreen Wipers

Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoy the sound of squeaky rubber on glass, and the hypnotic, occasionally in-the- way nature of traditional windscreen wipers as much as the next man. However, could the problem be solved in a functionally superior but vastly over-complex manner? "Yes" is the answer to that. So, here we go.

Take a weather RADAR... specifically a Ka-band system for detecting small droplet phenomena. Mount it on your car in as inconspicuous a manner possible. Right, now you can track the rain drops that are in front of your car... some clever software trickery will take GPS data on the car's position and speed and will be able to identify rain drops which will intercept the car (rain drops which need to go, clearly.).

The second component of the system, will be a pair of CO2 lasers. I've chosen CO2 lasers because they're cheap for their power, and can be isotopically doped to modify their IR frequency down to about 1090 or so, this is useful, because that's where water absorbs. There's going to be some pretty fancy optics required to track and laser tens of thousands of raindrops. So I recommend the fitting of pretty fancy optics. Now, in some parts of the world, 300 litres of rain have fallen on 1 square metre in an hour, I appreciate that boiling off 300 litres, quickly, with lasers may require equipment which could negatively impact the fuel economy of a family hatchback, but this is where the clever bit comes in... Using the lasers as a pair, they will shoot the rain drop from two directions, the volume where the beams cross will be subject to heating at a much greater rate... now, I'm betting that you can create a small pocket of steam very rapidly in this manner.... blowing the raindrop to smithereens. With VERY fancy optics you could use this system to apply asymmetric force to the raindrop.... a blast on the left side would send the drop to the right, and so on.

The combination of fancy optics and clever software should be able to "steer" the raindrops around your car so that you're driving through a dry tunnel, like some form of automotive Moses. As a side benefit, you will effectively double the rainfall either side of you, making people without the system suffer accordingly.