TIME Tech announced their Best Inventions of 2012 last week. The list, consisting of 25 items, contains everything from body armor for women, a civilisation starter kit, a motion-activated screwdriver, and a home HIV test kit.

One of our personal favourites is an indoor cloud machine by Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde (pic above). Its purpose is to create a small, perfect white cloud in the middle of a room. According to TIME, the effect “evokes both the surrealism of Magritte and the classical beauty of the old masters while reminding us of the ephemerality of art and nature”.

Also featured on the list is the Google Glass headset. The magazine hails this invention as “the device that will make augmented reality part of our daily lives”. Google Glass incorporates a speaker, microphone, computer display and forward-facing camera and enables users to surf the internet, take photos, check email, and make and receive phone calls, all through voice and gesture commands.

Even Goodyear made the list with their self-inflating tires. As soon as pressure gets too low, an internal pressure regulator opens to allow air to flow into a pumping tube, and as the wheel turns, the flattened part helps squeeze air from the tube through an inlet valve into the tire.

The rest of TIME’s list consists of: LiquiGlide, Eliodomestico Solar Water Distiller, Enable Talk Gloves, Techpet, Nike Flyknit Racer, Bounce Imaging, Sony RX100 Digital Camera, Wingsuit Racing, The MakerBot Replicator 2, Baxter, The Switchblade Drone, The Tesla Model S, Drifting Fish Farm, NASA’s Z-1 Space Suit, Element 113, Deepsea Challenger Submarine, Bahar Towers, and the Curiosity Rover

[Source: TIME]