Cloak of Invisibility Coming Soon?

Chris writes "The idea of an "invisibility cloak" has made the leap from science fiction books to an international patent application. The "three dimensional cloaking process and apparatus" for concealing objects and people (WO 02/067196) employs photodetectors on the rear surface which are used to record the intensity and color of a source of illumination behind the object. Light emitters on the front surface then generate light beams that exactly mimic the same measured intensity, color and trajectory. The result is that an observer looking at the front of the object appears to see straight through it."

Comments

The biggest question of course...

[kylus]

...what's the bonus to saving throws when wearing it? :)

Re:The biggest question of course...

[M.C. Hampster]

Ah yes, the first of what I would guess will be hundreds of jokes about D&D.

Re:The biggest question of course...

[oval_pants]

+1 bonus
-6000 dexterity for "wheelbarrow that you'll need to carry the batteries, fuel cells or magic moonbeams " post

Re:The biggest question of course...

[NoMercy]

Oponent suffers 50% chance of hit asuming the attacker can guess the position of the hidden enemy.

I'd also guess some modifiers would be given to stealth based checks.

Re:The biggest question of course...

[smead]

The really big question is will it cause you to embark on an epic quest to destroy it and ultimately lead you to having your finger bit off on the edge of a volcano, all while trying to avoid the temptation to use it?

Re:The biggest question of course...

[elvum]

darn - that's ruined the films for everyone now :-)

Re:The biggest question of course...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would also reduce the opponents number of attacks per round unless their intelligence/wisdom scores were high.

Re:The biggest question of course...

[btellier]

Well, it would effectively make the opponent blind, which I think would translate into a +3 bonus unless they had blind fighting.

Re:The biggest question of course...

[Dark Lord Seth]

+2, +5 vs Trolls

Pass gas, please

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you.

Practicality?

[nuggz]

There are many angles crossing an object, although this may work for simple front to back (as the article states)
I don't think it is that workable for all directions, or even more then a few.

Re:Practicality?

[Lshmael]

It could still be useful. Wrap the Mona Lisa in the middle of one of these babies and watch it seemingly disappear, leaving a blank wall in its stead.

Re:Practicality?

[lburdet]

actually, it *could* work in 3-D...
follow me on this one... assuming it reproduces the light intensity it received on one side *exactly*!!

if one were to built a perfectly spherical such object, there would indeed be no trace of you... all incident rays would be propagated through the center of the sphere to the other side.
come to think of it, i don't think you'd even have a shadow, which could have given you away... a shadow is whe something "blocks" the sun's rays... thing is, the rays are blocked, but then re-created at the exact opposite of the sphere...

a wall won't be useful, but walking aroung in a bubble-boy-like sphere could work, imho

Re:Practicality?

[N3WBI3]

This would be pretty good camo though. you would see only a distortion from a distance. One could take this a step further and make polygon dectectors / projectors giving you sides. I know it would not be perfect but you just want to make youself hard to see in combat.

Re:Practicality?

[lars_stefan_axelsson]

I don't think it is that workable for all directions, or even more then a few.

Well, that depends on what you mean by workable.

Just getting the hue and intensity right (and being able to vary those) will go a very long way. It's not for nothing that English fishermen weren't allowed to paint their hulls white in days of yore, or that Mountbatten had his fleet painted pink. (The sky is brigther than the ocean at dusk/night and hence a light hull blends in. And pink works better agains the redder skies of asian waters).

The US Army even conducted trials with lamps on tanks to make them harder to spot as silouettes against the sky on a ridge line for example.

Now, the light trick is unworkable for other reasons (you have to be quick on the switch) should you drive in front of a dark object. So if this process could be automated there's much to be gained.

Now, of course if your main objection that this is far from a cloak of invisibility, that's for certain. But it could be quite useful camouflage.

And kids remember the old adage "A running soldier in a camoflague uniform, looks just like a running soldier in a camoflague uniform." Camouflage is still very much a stationary art. I doubt that tricks like these would change that much.

Re:Practicality?

[Sique]

There is still one issue left: Make yourself invisible for a specified range of the spectrum, and you will be also blind in the same spectrum. There is no way to measure in a given spectrum without having a measurable effect in the same spectrum. Experimental physics is full of ways to figure out the influence of your own measurement on the "real" values of the things you are measuring.

Re:Practicality?

[Anonymous Coward]

My feeling is that this guy knows he doesn't have a chance of making a practical "cloaking device." I think he's just claiming the patent on the idea before anyone else does. Then, when someone else in the future figures out how to make a bona-fide cloaking device (complete with that awesome Romulan warbird cloaking sound), he'll charge them a licensing fee for their design because he already patented the basic idea. Sure, to be granted a patent, he has to have built a cloaking device already. But what if it's only, say, 10% functional? Not at all useful, but he would still claim prior art on the thing.

It's like trawling through science fiction, picking out all of the interesting (but currently unworkable) design ideas, making crude mock-ups of how they might work, and patening them.

Re:Practicality?

[_Swank]

stop reading the wheel of time. there are no warders. you cannot channel -- and niether can anyone else. the dark one and the creator are not at war (ok, they might be). there is no dragon reborn.

Re:Practicality?

[WickedChicken]

Think of a hologram. Depending on your viewing angle the lightwaves bring out a different patten from the interference stored in the hologram. That is how holograms can make 3D images - because both of your eyes see two slightly different images and can calculate distance. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to convert a hologram to use LEDs so that depending on what angle you view you get a corresponding image.

Re:Practicality?

[Jon Abbott]

I suppose the same could go for space ships -- paint one entirely black, and you've got an invisible ship. That would make docking rather hard, though...

Re:Practicality?

[Sawbones]

This color scheme is used on a certain tropical fish (though I forget it's name/species/location). It's shaded dark/black on the top and light on the bottom. Predators looking up will have a hard time locating it on the relatively bright background of the sky and predators from above won't be able to see it in the mirk below. I thought it was pretty cool when I first heard about it.

Along the lines of the whole "only works from one direction" problem for this camo. If you're not going for total image replication but rather a general brightness and hue, it seems like you could have one basically strips of mixed photo sensors and emitters paired up to similar strips on exactly oposite sides of the object. It would be a much worse match from any given direction than the technique described, but it would match at least partially from all directions.

Re:Practicality?

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

It would only be invisible as long as it didn't go in front of any other spaceships, planets, moons, etc. near you or even in front of a few too many stars.

It would still radiate in all sorts of other spectra anyway, and who's going to use visible light for spaceship detection?

Tim

Re:Practicality?

[fjordboy]

Another example is lights underneath aircraft that mimic the sky...or painting the underside of aircraft blue. *shrug*

Another project from a while ago that the navy had was a ship that actually produced mist and had lighting that matched the lighting around it...making it very, very difficult to see from the air, or the sea. (It was in popsci, so I doubt it ever came to be).

Re:Practicality?

[Bob C. Cock]

Even if the cloak is only 50% effective, when worn with standard camouflage beneath, that could certainly provide enough protection from prying eyes.

Re:Practicality?

[HiThere]

Read your Lensman series again. You design the shape of the ship to be narrow, so that it can't be seen in the direction that it's pointed. You build it out of Titanium and Beryllium alloys so magnets won't notice it. You get rid of magnetic relays. etc.

Occulusion isn't really anything to worry about in space. Distances being what they are, a ship would need to be REALLY big to be noticable. Of course, if you are sneaking up on something, you do need to worry about it, but the engines are more worrisome. So you need to sneak quite slowly, and with care for the exact direction that you approach from. (And you still don't worry about occulding another space ship. By the time you get *that* close, they'll find you if they're looking for you, so you pretend to be one of them.)

Re:Practicality?

[Xaoswolf]

Remember watching the movie "The Predator"? When the hunter sat in a tree, you couldn't see him unless you knew where to look, or already had three dots on your fore head. He was basicly invisible at that time. But when he moved, you got to see all the distortion and weird angles produced by his camoflage. That is basicly what this armor will produce, it will keep tanks hidden better than large cammo netting, snipers will be able to sit invisible for hours in almost plain sight.
You just can't let them get too close or you're screwed.

Re:Practicality?

[spiro_killglance]

To pick up the light and a hologram and display it
again, the clock would have to have receptors
and emitters smaller than the wavelength of
the light. Plus they would have to acturately
reproduce the light over all the optical wavelengths. (Infra red and radio would be
good to if you don't want to be detected).
This would require high nanotech.

However do this at radio frequencies, especial
a single known fixed radio frequency, for perfect
radar stealth seems feasible, (but very
expensive) with current electronics.

Re:Practicality?

[mons]

I agree with you:
Just getting the hue and intensity right (and being able to vary those) will go a very long way
but I can't understand how you gonna get the hue and intensity right.
Here, on the article they state:

The photodetectors on the rear surface are used to record the intensity and color of a source of illumination behind the object.

So, besides some situations, depending on light orientation, surface reflection, etc... when you place the object it's already affecting it's enviroment.
How, the object dosen't read his own shadow?

Re:Practicality?

[nazh]

This color scheme is used on a certain tropical fish (though I forget it's name/species/location). It's shaded dark/black on the top and light on the bottom. Predators looking up will have a hard time locating it on the relatively bright background of the sky and predators from above won't be able to see it in the mirk below. I thought it was pretty cool when I first heard about it.

not just used on tropical fish, its pretty common among other fish,and other species like birds.
just look at cod and haddock, even sharks,
and its not just to avoid being spotted by predators, its also to avoid being spotted by the prey.

Re:Practicality?

[pseudosocrates]

It's not even workable in one direction if you think about it. If it works in less that all directions, then the object in question will cast a shadow. Even if the main shadow is not in a visible place to the 'enemy', the area behind the object [as they look at it] will be darker than the surrounding landscape as there will be a certain amount of blocked light to the general area. -- Just my Issey Miyake and CKone (two scents)

Re:Practicality?

[Dannon]

"A running soldier in a camoflague uniform, looks just like a running soldier in a camoflague uniform."

How very, very true. And, in the dark, stillness is the best camoflage of all.

This brings to mind a memory of a childhood camping trip. Had a flashlight-tag-like game in the middle of the woods, where one person started out as 'it', and everyone else started out away from the campfire. The campfire circle was a 'safe' zone. Get tagged by an 'it' person, and you joined the 'it' crowd.

Eventually there was only one person left untagged, and no one could find him, even though he was right under everyone's noses. Standing against a tree. And he wasn't even wearing dark clothing.

Ah, memories....

Re:Practicality?

[Kintanon]

Didn't the lensman solution use a Diesel engine for one of these things? Since it was completely undetectable as far as energy emissions went, and the person only needed to move a very very short distance with it?

Kintanon

Re:Practicality?

[__aaahtg7394]

just come in on inertia... you don't have drag to worry about in space.

or perhaps keep some tanks of supercooled gas (liquid, solid, whatever) and use that as propellant (slowly, as you said). if you use small enough amounts, it shouldn't be too visible as a cloud, and (if i remember my chemistry right), PV=nRT, where n and R are constants, so, as long as P is going down at the same rate that V is going up (ie: you're jetting it out quick enough), T should stay nice and relatively constant, not emitting too much IR.

and i thought taking chemistry was an absolute waste of time. pssh (no pun intended)

Re:Practicality?

[Kintanon]

Even if it only reduces the visibility of an object by 30% it will be incredibly useful for military vehicles. I don't know if it would be more, or less useful than current camo techniques, but I'm sure it will have some great uses once it is further refined.

Kintanon

Re:Practicality?

[overunderunderdone]

Well it still wouldn't be "invisibility". In your example of a sphere imagine it in a real life situation. You are standing in front of a line of trees (from my POV), blue sky above, purplish/blue mountains in the distance behind you to the left and yellowish green grass below you. When I look at you I will see the tree's in the direct center of the sphere as advertised. BUT I will also see at an oblique angle a glimpse of the purplish blue mountains at the RIGHT and a glimpse of the green grass at the top and worse bright blue sky at the lower edge of the sphere (or much worse the blindingly bright sun - so much for going undetected)

Still a pretty cool trick probably decent cammo in that the constantly changing image would break up the outline. Still you would sure as hell know something was there, though it would probably "hurt your eyes" the way an op-art poster does.

Re:Practicality?

[buzy buzy]

Ah,

But put a mirror behind the unit with the mona lisa in the unit and what would be the result???

For every problem there is a utterly stupid solution.

Re:Practicality?

[lars_stefan_axelsson]

So, besides some situations, depending on light orientation, surface reflection, etc... when you place the object it's already affecting it's enviroment. How, the object dosen't read his own shadow?

Well, if you're going for full "invisibility" with this approach you're going to be disapointed.

But think about a military vehicle in a simpler, say six sided scenario and the obvious benefits of being able to have one side dark (the one pointing away from the heavy forest), and the other one white (pointing away from the snowfield you're currently traversing) and the benefits are pretty clear.

Today in winter you have to decide whether to paint the whole tank white (or rather cammo white) or not. You can't in general have it both ways. Even a tank with very limited capability to adapt the color to the environment (from dark to light) in the winter scenario would increase it's chances of going undetected.

And of course we are only discussing evading the mark one eye ball detector here, but before you discount that, remember that fancier techniqes not withstanding, more armies still rely heavily on it. This is rapidly becoming less and less true, granted, but that's not to say that in the future you will be excempt from ordinary visual spectrum camoflague. Rather you'll have to do that in addition...

Re:Practicality?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but it is kind of pointless without the inertialess gizzmo so the diesel drive can work...

Re:Practicality?

[MoneyT]

By the time they got too close to the sniper, they'd be dead.

Re:Practicality?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly the technology used by The Predator, as explained in the second movie. It worked pretty well although not perfect, until it got wet.

I figure it would work best for static objects and the major difficulty would be to create the illusion when looking from above.

Re:Practicality?

[Kintanon]

Ahhh yeah! I was thinking there must have been another component to it. I really enjoyed the weird tech from those books...

Kintanon

Re:Practicality?

[Transient0]

easy.

a reflection of yourself(assuming you are looking at the cloaked mona lisa).

Re:Practicality?

[CitizenjaQ]

This color scheme is used on a certain tropical fish (though I forget it's name/species/location). It's shaded dark/black on the top and light on the bottom.

That would be the "penguin" species of tropical fish, I believe.

Re:Practicality?

[pmancini]

I once was in what the British call a "Gilley" (spelling) Suit. This is your basic battledress with camo pattern along with a netting with artificial leaves. The leaves were simply strips from an anti-radar cover. Running around in this set up did rather draw the eye. However, when I went to ground in the forest I disappeared. A Marine veteran with 15 years experience saw me go down 20 feet from his position. 10 seconds later he communicated he had no idea where I was.

You don't have to have perfect camo for it to be effective. Break up shapes, blend in with the local color and you are ready to roll. The problem with the suit mentioned above was, what happens when I move out of the forest and into an urban environment? Obviously I would be a lot easier to spot than someone in just regular dark clothing. A well camouflaged man who is a poor shot will probably survive longer than the poorly concealed expert sniper.

A system like this could be useful, depending on how it generates color and how well it minimizes shine. Nothing gets the attention more than something shiney. That is why snipers often camoflage their weapons as well.

Re:Practicality?

[jonadab]

I'm afraid it's not that simple. The light striking your structure
(whatever it is) won't all be coming in perpendicular to the surface.

I'll let that sink in...

Besides measuring wavelengths and intensities, you have to measure
the _direction_ of every incoming bit of light and, without a delay
that would be perceptible, send it to the appropriate point it would
have reached if you weren't there and send it on its way aimed in
the correct direction.

Further, all that gets you is a neat parlor trick. If you want to
hide from people who know you might have a cloaking device (say, for
military use), it gets harder. You have to account for polarity, or
else all the other guy has to do is shine polarised light all around
and use polarised sunglasses, and if you didn't reproduce the correct
polarity, you'll glow. And as someone else has said you need to
account for all wavelengths, not just visible light.

Re:Practicality?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly why I have discarded this idea over and over again when brainstorming with friends. To recreate the background behind you you would need detectors and emitters in every place and every direction. Sure you could lower the number of detectors and emitters, but then the human eye would probably see the imperfection and it wouldn't work. Of course it will work better than no camouflage, but invisibility cloak? No way!

Re:Practicality?

[budgenator]

Just getting the hue and intensity right (and being able to vary those) will go a very long way actualy getting the hue and intensity right will be all but impossible on a battlefield. The Modern battlefield is just bristling with detectors and the human eye is one the easiest to fool, it only sees visible light, NODS Night Obsevation devices sees mainly reds and near infrared, Thermal vision devices of course sees very small temperature variations. And oppsoed to the eyes limited ability to see, the Human mind is one of the best pattern recognitions devices. a few LED's in red green and blue may be able to fool my naked eyes, especialy if you're very still, through in millimeterwave detectors, two or three different frequencies of radar and a multi-spectral scan is going to make you look like a searchlight at night.

Re:Practicality?

[packeteer]

your right that this is used for stationary trargets... most likely this would be used to protect buildings and other large slow objects (tanks, boats, maybe landing strips) from being seem from far away... of course this wont work up close but think of this... you have alanding strip that is invisible at a total of 90 degress... from straight up and 45 degrees on either side it cant be seem... satallite photo's would not be able to detect it but planes coming in for a landing would have no trouble finding the markings to land...

Re:Practicality?

[TrickiDicki]

What's wrong with a bunch of mirrors reflecting the light around the object? You don't have to recharge mirrors....

Re:Practicality?

[meowwmixx]

I have a feeling that introductory working models of this idea will be involved in merely hiding a stationary object, such as a base tent or other important thing. Under close scrutiny, it would obviously have visible flaws, but with a cursory glance, or from a great distance it has potential. However, this is assuming your enemy isn't using any sort of IR device... There are all sorts of holes in the theory but I have a feeling that the first models will be more of a learning experience than anything, really. Sort of a springboard to more advanced models and techniques. Early forms of advanced technology usually are...

Re:Practicality?

[Ibby]

And to make it really stealthy, put clear Chrsitmas lights all over it...

Re:Practicality?

[mgv]

There are many angles crossing an object, although this may work for simple front to back (as the article states)

Of course, the low tech way of doing this from a few directions is to use 4 large prisms to bend the light around yourself:

_/''\_

Which works alot better than a bunch of LEDs and would probably work for infrared and UV as well.

My 2c worth.

Michael

Re:Practicality?

[I. M. Bur]

I think the sniper has a serious problem, if dead guys still can get close to him.

Re:Practicality?

[armb]

> I once was in what the British call a "Gilley" (spelling) Suit.

I've always seen it as ghillie, but http://www.m-w.com says "variant of gillie".
In this context it's "2. chiefly Scottish & Irish : a fishing and hunting guide"

Basic idea is to disguise the outline of the body. Often enhanced with real local vegetation.

Re:Practicality?

[pmancini]

Thanks for the correction! It allowed me to find a website with a useful photo gallery:

www.ghilliesuits.com

Re:Practicality?

[ShadowKatmandu]

Check out the actual patent application. As near as I can tell, it's a mesh of photo sensors and LCDs so that it works from every direction.

moving "eyes" can pick it up?

[guest12]

but how does it deal with binocular vision

Re:moving "eyes" can pick it up?

[trix_e]

My completely uneducated guess is that the object will appear a lot like those "magic eyes" pictures that were all the rage a few years ago...

i.e. when you move from side to side (or up/down) the object will shift at a slightly different rate than the background, and your senses will detect something. you may not be able to tell what it is, but something will feel "off". I'm sure at greater distances the effect will be less, and therefore the technique will be more useful.

Reminds me of Predator, and the way that it shimmered when it moved. My guess is that they used the same thought when they made that movie.

Very cool.

Re:moving "eyes" can pick it up?

[happyclam]

Reminds me of Predator, and the way that it shimmered when it moved. My guess is that they used the same thought when they made that movie.

More likely, they were just thinking that a truly invisible creature didn't make for very scary film footage.

Re:moving "eyes" can pick it up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fun fact: a few years after Predator was filmed, the ENTIRE forest (in Mexico) was cut down. Fuck'n progress.

Re:Say what?

[severnaGates]

So you can walk in opn your parents in the middle of sex.

Looking behind it

[SWroclawski]

The problem with this device as it's designed so far is that it only works when looking straight at the object.

In addition, I have serious questions about the resolution of the device (how many sensors and how many light emitters). Will the person look "pixelated" and or will there be some other problem.

Lastly, such a device is not useful in combat situations as many soldiers in such a ground war situation will be outfitted with infr-red detectors, which will probably be able to detect the human behind the suit.

Good idea but has a lot of practical problems (we haven't even discussed the power source).

Re:Looking behind it

[Anonymous Coward]

Will the person look "pixelated" and or will there be some other problem

Nah, the gadget will of course incorporate a couple of Radeons to do some antialiasing in run-time. And everything of course using OpenGL!

Re:Looking behind it

[Anonymous Coward]

Prefer David Copperfield and mirrors.
I think the cuttlefish has prior art, who also can alter skin texture as well.
Also LED's have fixed wavelength, so we need a variable light wavelength led

Re:Looking behind it

[Anonymous Coward]

this is OOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLDDDDDD! At least, i thought it ages ago. Looking straight at something? Well, this`ll be used by the military to hide tanks and APC - missiles tend to come for you in a straight line (curved slightly).

Re:Looking behind it

[tunah]

The problem with this device as it's designed so far is that it only works when looking straight at the object.

Yeah, I tested a prototype of this, and the biggest problem was people spotting me while looking in the opposite direction.

Flaw

[alnapp]

I suspect that the squeaking of the wheelbarrow that you'll need to carry the batteries, fuel cells or magic moonbeams that'll be needed to power this thing will render any invisibility firly useless.

But I still want one, go figure

Re:Flaw

[Anonymous Coward]

It woulda' worked for Andre the Giant in "The Princess Bride".

Re:Flaw

[rushiferu]

Early versions may not be good for the soldier on the move, but it could be a good way to hide larger objects. Small base camps come to mind. Probably better than that camo netting in certain situations.

Re:Flaw

[That_Dan_Guy]

I think it would more likely be used on vehicles than people. Abundent power supply and the fact that they are far more difficult to hide at the moment (ever try to park a tank under a bush?)

Re:Flaw

[borl]

If available, tanks should be parked in houses.

Far more useful

[anthonyclark]

I'll be more impressed when a Cloak of Charisma is released; hellloooo, laydeez|boyz!

(and no, those new cargo pants you just bought from Gap do not count).

Re:Far more useful

[orthogonal]

I'll be more impressed when a Cloak of Charisma is released; hellloooo, laydeez|boyz!

Or in Bangkok, hello lady-boys!

Which reminds me, the Cloak of Charisma already exists: it's called a money-clip full of fifties.

Re:Far more useful

[HiThere]

Help me live longer! And you too! Use your spare CPU cycles to run folding@home [stanford.edu]

So I went to the site to consider participation. I didn't look too hard, but I couldn't find a single thing that indicated that they would release the data into public domain, or that they wouldn't patent things to make it unusable by those who couldn't afford their rates.

I may be cynical, but this looks to me like another scam where they ask the public to donate, and then they take all the benefits.

There are reasons why I support the GPL, and this appears to be an example of why I feel it should be extended into other realms. It used to be called academic respectability, but somehow that got lost as soon a money became available. Your tax dollars at work, privitizing IP!

Re:Far more useful

[ronaldcromwell]

romeo has one of those. not that he needs to use it, of course.

Re:Far more useful

[orthogonal]

Your point is well-taken. Making the results of work I freely donate freely available is also very important to me. From the FAQ, which admittedly could be easier to find:

Who "owns" the results? What will happen to them?

Unlike other distributed computing projects, Folding@home is run by an academic institution (specifically the Pande Group, at Stanford University's Chemistry Department), which is a non-profit institution dedicated to science research and education. We will not sell the data or make any money off of it.

Moreover, we will make the data available for others to use. In particular, the results from Folding@home will be made available on several levels. Most importantly, analysis of the simulations will be submitted to scientific journals for publication, and these journal articles will be posted on the web page after publication. Next, after publication of these scientific articles which analyze the data, the raw data of the folding runs will be available for everyone, including other researchers, here on this web site.

Been done

[Anonymous Coward]

Most readers of Slashdot already have one of these. Problem is, it only works on women.

The problem with this is...

[Anonymous Coward]

won't the terrorist networks just use this to cloak?

The've done military experiments about this

[Anonymous Coward]

What they found is that if they attach flourcent tube lights around the plane, they get a craft that dissapears to the human eye after a short distance. For once, you have light coming at you from all over the object, and not reflected or altered sun light.

I believe this was written about in a popular sci. magazine.

Cloak of Invisability?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, well I have a 1+ mace and a whole bunch of spells!

Call me back when someone has invented Batfink Wings, which are like a shield of steel. Then I'll be interested.

Is this how it works now?

[DrTrogg]

Does this mean they have a prototype? I'm a bit fuzzy on how this all works - is there any rule regarding reality when you file for these patents, or is the game simply to get one so you can financially rape the people who do the real work?

Re:Is this how it works now?

[Anonymous Coward]

My thoughts exactly. Where is the invention? You have to have a real, working invention before you can patent it. This is one of the problems with allowing processes and algorithms to be patented... anyway, if they don't have a real device, then there's a ton of prior art (see the aforementioned science fiction).

Shadows

[suso]

The only problem is, you're going to see some weird shadowing around the cloaked object and be able to tell that it's there. I can't believe that I'm actually replying to this post.

Re:Shadows

[anicklin]

Why would that be true? If the light passing worked in all three dimentions, it should just cast the appropriate shadows normally. I could see a shadowing problem if any sides of the cloaking equipment touched against a surface (but this might not be as unworkable as it seems). So, the ground under a cloaked person might be a little funny. Maybe a little software correction would be necessary. :-)

Re:Shadows

[Anonymous Coward]

If the light passing worked in all three dimentions.

It doesn't, but more importantly who cares anyhow. There isn't such a device, it's a patent for an idea any one of us could have had if we let ourselves think outloud last time we went drinking. Problems of power consumption, heat generated through light emition, and the inability to obtain real life resolution and color depth through todays technology only help insure this idea won't come to pass, after all who wants to do the R&D so the patent holder can make a buck. Pretty sure my $5 keychain laser pointer will let me verify that the strange object over there in the trees is indeed not a television set shaped like a man.

I can see it already

[Wind_Walker]

Person who thinks he's invisible: You can't see me!!!

Naked Woman: Actually, I can see a shimmery shape, because you're slightly off-center to me.

PWTHI: Wait, wait, you're not in the right place. Move to the left.

NW: Ok. Now you're even MORE shimmery

PWTHI: No, no, MY left, not your left

NW: Oh, sorry. There, the shimmering went away.

PWTHI: Ha ha ha ha!!!! I can see you naked!!

NW: Sir, this is a strip club. It's not exactly difficult.

Re:I can see it already

[ed1park]

Who here has had a stripper call them "sir" in a strip club?! (uhm... for those of u that have been to one of course ;)

Re:I can see it already

[Anonymous Coward]

you know you're old when ...

ouch - that's got to hurt!

Prior Art

[Blob Pet]

Those silly authors of the patent application obviously haven't seen Harry Potter....What do you mean that wasn't real! What are you going to tell me next - that Jedi isn't a legitmate religion in Australia?

thermal?

[dollargonzo]

what about a thermal invisibility cloak? now that would indeed be a feat of engineering. our eyes are much more sensitive than any infrared detectors, so the resolution would not need to be as high. at the moment, i really don't think there is anything in the form of thermal camo.

Re:thermal?

[theRiallatar]

True, there isn't thermal camo, but to my knowledge, there's a type of grenade which produces heat over a wide area without an explosive force, effectively rendering thermal vision useless to anyone travelling through the grenade's field of effect.

Re:thermal?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can use insulation, reducing the thermal signature, and also make the insulation uneven, breaking up the silouette. Also, let more heat leave the lower part of the body than the upper body, in most situations, the ground is warmer than the air, specially at night when IR is most useful. Of course, you can also *suppress* IR quanta with counter-phased emission of the same IR spectrum, cutting off the part that does not match background emission... but I cannot disclose details of this to Terran barbarians :-P

Besides, this patent is just so bogus. I invented that very same `technology' when I was a kid; I called it ``octopus skin active optical cammo''. Talk about previous art. A *patent* for it! Go figure.

Re:thermal?

[TheAlmightyQ]

A good ghillie suit can break up your silhouette in visible light and IR.
It wouldn't mask you against an evenly heated background, but there's usually enough variation in your environment to make it hard for someone to spot you through an IR scope.
This page has some sample photos. (taken with a grain of salt since they are marketing their product, but still a fairly accurate demonstration)

Re:thermal?

[TheBeast99]

Copy Polar Bears fur:
equivelant of fibre-optic fibre. They have the lowest heat emmission spectrum of any mammal (I think). They are virtually invisible on snow with IR or thermal imaging (I'm sure I heard it on here?)

Here's an even better application

[Brento]

Instead of making me invisible, I just want it to make me look thinner. Shave off my side edges by painting the background over my sides, and voila, I've lost 20 pounds.

Re:Here's an even better application

[BoBaBrain]

There already is a garment which does something like that for guys like us.

It's called a "tracksuit".

Re:Here's an even better application

[jred]

Or a girdle...

Re:Here's an even better application

[eander315]

"I just want it to make me look thinner."

Why not just make it display your body as a muscular hunk/curvy hot chick instead? You could even have the suit display you as your favorite movie star/athlete/model. The only problem arises when you have to take the device off after it's done its duty :)

Prior Art?

[Arcturax]

Can't the fact that the idea has been around for a long time, in both sci-fi books, movie and games mean this has "prior art". I know no one has built such a device yet, unless the military has them secreted away. I do remember seeing a Discovery channel documentary about using this on tanks and police to deal with hostage situations once the technology was worked out. That was quite some time ago as well!

So can this or should this be patentable?

What about thermoptic camo, like in Deus Ex, which blocks other forms of radiation as well? I imagine with this one that this guy is trying to patent you would still show up on infrared and radar/millimeter/microwave scanning devices. Same deal with X-Rays too I would imagine.

If he can get this, maybe I should patent on which can block other forms of radiation.

Re:Prior Art?

[kalidasa]

Can't the fact that the idea has been around for a long time, in both sci-fi books, movie and games mean this has "prior art".

Uh, no. I am not a patent lawyer, but I believe prior art means someone actually has to have built such a thing, not just dreamed it up.

Re:Prior Art?

[aderuwe]

Well if it is not patented nobody will make serious bucks selling invisibility cloaks and this means noone will produce them.
The inventor also wouldn't see a penny (no, the author of some sci-fi story dit not invent it, he had the idea.. FTL drive prior art, anyone?), which would be a shame.

That't what I think, anyway. Maybe I'm just blatantly wrong.

Re:Prior Art?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, there was a project in WWII that used floodlights on the front edges of aircraft to make them less visible to subs, allowing them to close and drop torpedoes. Unfortunately, radar was being deployed at that time, making visual spotting unnecessary.

I'd say that project was prior art.

Re:Prior Art?

[p3d0]

Of course it should be patentable. Just because it has been mentioned in fiction doesn't mean anything. Would you deny patents on warp engines or teleportation devices?

Now, if there were a work of sci-fi that described how to implement this device in detail, then that might be prior art.

Re:Prior Art?

[Alranor]

Again, IANAL, but I don't think it needs to have been built, just described accurately enough that it's not a new insight for the person actually building it

IIRC nobody could patent geostationary satellites when they were first built because a certain well known sci-fi author had described the concepts previously.

Or I could be talking crap, that happens too.

Re:Prior Art?

[BigJimSlade]

"...not just dreamed it up."

Isn't that what a patent is, just an idea that has been "dreamed up"? :)

Re:Prior Art?

[mbourgon]

Shadowrun mentions this, in some detail. IIRC, it involves a lattice of fiber that redirects light around you.

And it doesn't have to be in detail - Heinlein patented the waterbag. Okay, bad example - trivial to implement, tough to invent.

Re:Prior Art?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is even more prior art - I remember reading about something amost identical to this in a New Scientist ages ago being worke don by the US military. Can't find the ref via the web archive, but it could have been from before the web archive coverage.

Re:Prior Art?

[martyn s]

If nobody is willing to make them, then that's what you want! That's perfect. So if you go into business you'll be the only one selling them! It's like the restaurant that's so busy, nobody goes there anymore.

Re:Prior Art?

[Vakara]

Actually the shadowrun implementatin was strikingly similar to the patent. It involved cameras on the invisible object, and a suit which could emit light such that an image processing computer could process the camera images from the opposite side of the "invisible" target and project an image of what's "beyond" the target to the appropriate area, making him appear to be invisible (or at least hard to see).

Re:Prior Art?

[error0x100]

No, because then just about anyone could get patents on all sorts of things that they've put no effort into. Generally, you don't really patent an *idea*, you patent a *technique* for *implementing* some idea. That technique must be new, and must be non-obvious *to someone skilled in the field* (at the time the invention was devised .. e.g. the internal combustion engine might be well understood by any mechanic today, but *at the time it was invented* it was not obvious to others 'skilled in the arts'). I haven't looked, but I'd guess that this patent isn't on the idea of an invisilibity cloak, but on some specific technique of implementing one. It sounds pretty dubious to me though.

Re:Prior Art?

[Tekgno]

Like the impossible improbability device? Those instructions were precise enough I think, they sound like they could even work.

An interesting concept...

[altgrr]

This has been done before using fibre optics, I believe, so that you would effectively see through the person because they wore an outfit consisting of thin fibre optic wires routeing light straight through them. This was on TV once, although I don't know whether it was the actual suit being shown or merely some special effects to show what it _could_ look like. Either way, it looked obvious that there was someone there - anything longer than a brief glance would be time enough to tell.

Re:An interesting concept...

[Idarubicin]

This has been done before using fibre optics, I believe, so that you would effectively see through the person because they wore an outfit consisting of thin fibre optic wires routeing light straight through them.

It's a thought, but again, you're stuck with something that only really works from one or two directions--and then, it works badly. Anybody who's worked in laser optics knows it's bloody difficult to get light to couple efficiently into a fibre, and that's working with collimated laser light.

You might be able to "see through" someone, but the image you'd get would be quite dim, unless you amplify somewhere in the middle. This is--difficult. (Understatement.)

I suppose this is a great idea, if you only have one person to hide from, and you always face them, and you have access to a lot of little detectors and light sources.

Wow, it sounds exactly like...

[ActiveSX]

...Metal Gear Solid! Honestly, I think the bandana would be more fun to have, but I'd settle for invisibility, even if a cardboard box works most of the time.

old camoflage technique

[Alien54]

I recall this as similar to an old WWII camoflage technique, to make the apparent brightness of an object match the bacjground.

I believe in WWII some submarine hunter aircraft had spotlights on the front to make the apparent brightness of the dark aircraft match the sky. Killed more subs that way.

this technique worked really well for large objects if they were a good distance away, like for a tank of the horizon or an aircraft in the sky. awful for close up work.

I recall a good article on this someplace on the web, but to find it now on short notice .....

Re:old camoflage technique

[ckedge]

Roger that. They're still experimenting with it I believe.

Saw some clip on TV once of a modern British Army truck whose side was covered in spotlights sitting at the crest of a hill. A few km away they showed what it looked like before and after turning on the lights. The truck just disappeared against the sky.

I'm guessing that there are all sorts of other problems. IE: it only works when you're siloetted against the sky, and against a dark hill it spots you out!, so it's probably not as useful on a ground vehicle as it seems.

Now, laying down a bright sheet of photo-luminescent plastic or super bright white LEDs on a slow moving low flying military drone, that might be a cool idea to increase it's survivability. It's always silouetted against the sky. The only problem there is power consumption. Even an overcast sky is hundreds of watts per square meter of light.

Re:old camoflage technique

[shoor]

I saw that on a TV Documentary. I believe it was called the Yehudi project.

It's only a patent

[sossles]

OK, it's one thing to patent the idea (surely lots of people have thought of this idea before - I sure have), but quite another to actually produce something based on the patent.

So I'll believe it is actually feasible when I see one (or don't see one) working.

--

Re:It's only a patent

[17028]

I considered it years ago, but couldn't think of a practical way to do it. What are you going to use as light emitters? LEDs or LCD? One LED doesn't require much power, but imagine a whole cloak covered with them. And the pixellation! Either that's a cubist bush, or there's an enemy soldier crouching in front of it.
It pisses me off that people are patenting concepts that they can't manufacture, it is unethical to say the least.

Re:It's only a patent

[Lussarn]

The hardest problem to solve is that one pixel would not have the same color depening on where you stand watching it.

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if I had a cock that unimpressive, I wouldn't want anyone to see it.

Memory lapse

[min0r_threat]

That's fantastic but I have a hard enough time remembering where I put my car keys, let alone an invisible cloak. Now . . . just where did I put that damn invisible cloak?

Terrorists

[Erik K. Veland]

This looks like some of those terrorist networks from that other article just below could need.

Huh?

[Hard_Code]

What, no pictures?

Re:Huh?

[Jondor]

If you look better, at the site, in the white area..

Re:Huh?

[Possum Man]

Actually, I'm just listening to CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) radio, and they are claiming that MIT *did* supply a picture, but there is a scandal over it. Apparently they submitted a picture which was allegedly an original done by the professor's daughter, but which turned out to be swiped from a Montreal-based comic book; not a look alike, but a cut and past of an actual drawing. MIT lawyers are claiming they had every right to do that, while the comics-author is claiming this is blatant plagiarization. MIT has removed the drawing, and was not available for comment on CBC.

I'll post a link if I find one. Or if anyone else finds a link first, please post it.

Re:Huh?

[wildekat]

what's the point, you can't see anything on them anyway ;)

(ok, troll.. but i just had to :))

Re:Huh?

[Possum Man]

Yup. That'd be it [blush]. Thanks!

Re:Huh?

[Hard_Code]

Did I miss something in the article...are these two articles related somehow? Is MIT behind this invisibility thing??

This will mean

[Anonymous Coward]

no more X10 cams for sale!

So this thing is bacially a...

[dmouritsendk]

flexible/wearable screen, displaying images at a high enough resulution and color depth so it can fool a eye into thinking is reality. OOh yes, and it include some sort of realtime enviromental photo caputere device...

YEA RIGHT...

Sounds like the inventor is trying to get a patent on a concept, I dont belive he has a clue how to accomblish this.

Must of been a Predator 1 & 2 marthon on TBS

[Anonymous Coward]

let me know when these guys figure out how to make a magic carpet.

Cloaking device

[Ch_Omega]

Better not let the Klingons get hold of this technology.

Re:Cloaking device

[Anonymous Coward]

You realise your sig has _eleven_ words in it, right?

Crap!

[entrigant]

I had this idea for quite a while. I just didn't think it'd be feasible until a reliable way of recording and emitting light from and to all angles from a point was developed. =/ It still isn't imho.

Re:Crap!

[elveu]

i has a similar idea too. however there is also the problem of emiting light and having receptors together without the light emitors disrupting the reading of the receptors without limiting the light emited. another problem is that if you stood agains a wall or in a shadom you would be an invisable glowing person as the light being emmited would make you appear to glow.

Close one

[The Pim]

Whew!... just imagine if this technology had been developed before our ability to uncloak terrorist networks.

security concerns

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, so now they're going to ban light beams because they can circumvent human security guards.

patent?

[oliverthered]

There's got to be prior art in a million and one science fiction books

Re:patent?

[Anonymous Coward]

For an example of priod art, see Man From UNCLE book #11, "The Invisibility Affair" by Thomas Stratton, where an invisibility device is stolen by THRUSH and mounted in an old dirigible to be uses as a silent invisible troop transport for a Central American revolution.

"An invisible dirigible; it has a certain charm." - Illya Kuryakin

What about shadows ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what they plan to do to shadows the cloaked object casts ?

The shadow tnds to be outside the cloak so they must have additional lights that wipe out the shadow as well. (here I blew _my_ chance to patent this extra technique ;)

I can see it ... no pun intended.

[Scholasticus]

I can see this happening, with a lot more refinement. You'd need gobs of processing power, hosts of tiny photodetectors and projectors, and a very small but reliable and long-lasting power supply (as somebody else already noted). With today's tech, this idea is pretty useless. The engineering obstacles could be overcome in the future. On the other hand, it would be pretty easy to come up with effective countermeasures. Wouldn't this thing radiate like hell in the infrared?

Why do people have to be cloaked?

[t0rnt0pieces]

Most people here seem to be concerned with the problems of cloaking people. Wouldn't a cloaking device be better used to cloak aircraft, artillery, etc? It'd probably be easier to fit a power source on a huge plane than on a person, plus air and ground units can be engineered to optimize their shape/size for cloaking. Imagine a squadron of cloaked F-16's patrolling/bombing hostile countries?

Re:Why do people have to be cloaked?

[keller]

At least for aircrafts it would not be very efficient. Planes still show up on radar/IR scans... Vision is in many situations not the integral part of fighting planes.

Re:Why do people have to be cloaked?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are other projects that approach cloaking from a very different angle than "retransmit light from back to front" (which is a very primitive method compared to what I've seen, as the method mentioned in the article only provides partial/frontal cloaking). I'm not close enough to know about the power requirements, but the technique is far different from what is alluded to in the article. There are also other considerations for cloaking technology: heat, sound, infrared and radar signatures to name a few. Those all have to be cloaked if you are to create an invisible tank, or an invisible soldier.

The most advantageous applications will be for artillery and infantry. Stealth jets/bombers can already evade radar long enough to reach their target, deploy their payload and exit the field before most opponents have a chance to mount any significant response. Think back to the Gulf War and remember how many jets the U.S. lost. Most of the aircraft deployed were not even stealth-equipped, and the U.S. was still virtually unscathed. The technology has progressed tremendously since then, new multi-role aircraft are either on the production lines or close to it, and yet, most of the opponents the U.S. would face in a war still rely on much of the same technology they had ten, twenty years ago.

Artillery and infantry have the least protection right now. They move much slower than aircraft, they can be bogged down by the terrain, and in the case of most infantry, they're in much closer proximities to the opposing forces. They are also very necessary units in most wars -- precision bombing can't do everything.

Re:Why do people have to be cloaked?

[Anonymous Coward]

This would be good for things like mobile command posts, signals units (MSE nodes), etc.

Re:Why do people have to be cloaked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a squadron of our stealth fighters. With a radar signature the size of a bird they're effectively invisible to radar. The only problem is the sound but by the time you hear them it's too late.

Come on people I do understand that this is fantasy but we have had invisible planes for decades. The WWII squadron of planes that are now patrolling around Bermuda, Emelia Airhart (sp?) patrolling the southern pacific. Plus countless others "missing in action".

You're not an engineer, are you?

[p3d0]

Have some imagination!

• For looking straight at the object: just coat the whole thing in emitters and detectors. That's not a big fundamental problem. You don't want light reflecting off the object anyway; might as well have detectors that absorb it.
• The resolution problem can be addressed simply by increasing the resolution until it's small enough not to be noticable. Regardless, even at low resolution, it's better than normal camouflage, isn't it? (Ever seen Predator?)
• The infrared problem can be solved the same way the visible light problem is solved. Just have IR detectors and emitters. You can even to a variety of frequencies (just as with visible light) to fool various enemy equipment.

To me, a big problem would be to counter an active detection system that shines light on the object and looks for reflections. The emitters will be subject to a design trade-off between emission and absorption, and it might be hard to find a technology that does both well enough.

Re:You're not an engineer, are you?

[SWroclawski]

Everything is solveable.

The idea in the patent is old. So we only care about the implemtnation, and the implementation looks full of problems.

When it's better and practical- then we should care.

Re:You're not an engineer, are you?

[sholden]

The infrared problem can be solved the same way the visible light problem is solved. Just have IR detectors and emitters. You can even to a variety of frequencies (just as with visible light) to fool various enemy equipment.

People generate heat. They don't generate visible light. Hence a different solution is required.

Re:You're not an engineer, are you?

[p3d0]

What you say makes no sense. Forgive me, but you seem like someone who prefers to find problems than solutions.

• I discussed fairly trivial solutions to all your supposed show-stopping problems. Did you even read them?
• If "everything is solvable" then how can you say this implementation is not practical?
• Who is this "we" in "we care only about the implementation"? Are you a professional in this area, or are you just pluralizing yourself to make your opinions seem more important?

I smell a karma whore.

Re:You're not an engineer, are you?

[p3d0]

Excellent point. What about insulating suits that radiate heat only through the soles of the boots? I suppose that would leave glowing footprints...

Well, perhaps the short-term answer is that this technology is not well-suited for people who want to hide themselves from well-equipped military forces. I think that still leaves a lot of possibilities.

Re:You're not an engineer, are you?

[MoneyT]

But the IR detectors used for locating the individual are using light. Not visable light but they are using light. And as we all know light is a wave, and when waves interect with other waves, they can be distorted. Perhaps it is possible to distort the IR waves enough to remain undetected.

Re:You're not an engineer, are you?

[Anonymous Coward]

I smell a troll with no edukashun.

Re:You're not an engineer, are you?

[The_dev0]

I'm not 100% sure on this, but the Australian Army uses a camo called "Jelly-Bean" which has special fibres in it to dull heat signatures as a way prevent being spotted with night vision. It doesn't stop all the body heat, just enough to not glow bright white or red on the heat detectors, therefore making it hard to discern individual soldiers, especially in a group.

Uhmm, YIKES!

[athlon02]

From that site mentioned in the article...

"The technique may be useful for wiping confidential or sensitive data from a disk."

The whole reason I use CD-Rs over CD-RWs is so that my data can *NOT* be erased... I've backed up family/friends photos, my CD collection, freeware apps, FreeBSD ISOs, etc, etc. on various CD-Rs and now someone has the potential for wiping that out if they ever got a hold of my CD-Rs? Maybe I should start looking around for how to get a hold of a full blown CD making machine, since last time I checked you can erase physical pitts on a CD.

Re:Uhmm, YIKES!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is news? I already have a device for destroying data on a cd. In fact, I have several - Axe, Knife, Hammer, File, Rasp etc.

Who cares about the disk when they are less than $1 each?

Re:Uhmm, YIKES!

[david duncan scott]

now someone has the potential for wiping that out if they ever got a hold of my CD-Rs?

They've had that all along. A hammer would do a pretty good job, sandpaper's effective, microwave ovens are a colorful approach, blowtorches work, trash compactors would do it, they could take them out to sea and drop them in the Marians Trench...nobody ever said CD's were indestructible.

Charisma is probably cheaper...

[ites]

Than this light-emitting cloak.
Just glue banknotes to your jacket.
Actually, as an example of conspicuous consumption
expensive toys like this are fairly good
at attracting women.

Re:Charisma is probably cheaper...

[Mr. Slippery]

Actually, as an example of conspicuous consumption expensive toys like this are fairly good at attracting women.

Any woman attracted by displays of conspicuous consumption is, ipso facto, not someone worth attracting.

Re:Charisma is probably cheaper...

[ites]

[Offtopic, mod me down if you must]

Any woman attracted by displays of conspicuous consumption is, ipso facto, not someone worth attracting.

:-) And yet... success and wealth are top of most women's criteria for men, whether they believe it themselves or not.
It is difficult to imagine things working any other way.
Women want men who can be good fathers and this means - most of all - good providers.

Re:Charisma is probably cheaper...

[Anonymous Coward]

Any woman attracted by displays of conspicuous consumption is, ipso facto, not someone worth attracting.

That's just something poor people tell themselves to feel good.

Re:Charisma is probably cheaper...

[Com2Kid]

Women want men who can be good fathers and this means - most of all - good providers.


Unfortunately evolution leaves off when the entire personality judgement thing comes in;

see, rich, successful, sure, nice criteria;

more important? Loving, caring, dedicated to the children. Poor or middle class men who love their kids and wife are better fathers then some asshole rich guy whose off all the time having sex with who ever'll sleep with him.

Re:Charisma is probably cheaper...

[Anonymous Coward]

You might think that ... but ... you in fact just contradicted yourself. Evolutionarily speaking, the simple fact that the "asshole rich guy" is "getting more" than the "nice, decent, poor guy", is simple proof that he scores much higher in tests of evolutionary fitness.

You may not like it, but that's the way the world works. All women are whores. Deal with it. Unless you can give them what they want, they won't want you.

Poor/Ugly/otherwise evolutionarily-disadvantaged people might as well just kill themselves. Sadly, this also applies to most geeks, probably greater than 60-70 percent of them will never reproduce, unless they hit it big with the $$$.

(Spoken from the POV of a possibly evolutionarily-disadvantaged geek, so don't go thinking that I'm somehow bashing geeks on /., because I'm not.)

Another limitation

[volpe]

I don't think it is that workable for all directions, or even more then a few.

Not only that, but you'd have to look at it from a pre-determined distance in order for the rendered view-angle to be appropriate.

preditor time: see the shimmer

[iamafreeman]

mimiking the light that arrived at the back at the front is no good for non-thin items as it will only look correct on fairly uniform backgrounds or at the point ot the object directly in front of you (even then the brain should work out something is wrong as you have 2 eyes and except the light at a given point to be different from different angles).

abcdefghil
| |
| |
=x=====

y

as I look at x from y I expect the light from a not c. This will go from appearing a bit wierd, say a shimmer, to totally wrong when there is something behind the object that the brain recognises say writing

Re:preditor time: see the shimmer

[iamafreeman]

wipes out my spacing, how nice

Yeah....

[Anonymous Coward]

...but what about the Elven Boots and the +5 broadsword?

Sorry, couldn't resist going old-school geek on ya.

Re:Yeah....

[E-Rock-23]

Oh, heck yeah. Add in some healing herbs, a few potions and the D&D community will see a resurgance in popularity like never before. Geeks wandering around, invisible, whacking each other on the melon with +1 clubs and bitching about saving throws.

Wait. That'd kill the "download pics of Sara Michelle Gellar" market. Bad idea...

Umm you better hide your CD's dude.

[jsonmez]

I'm coming over your house to erase your CD-Rs, because I have nothing better to do....

Straight from Predator

[Anonymous Coward]

Saw this the other day on A&E...after watching a screening of the (at the time) new movie 'Predator', some un-named General stated "Would someone get me one of those?". They've been working on it since, according to the show.

The next step

[Rumagent]

Ahh... finally! I have been looking for the next frontier in pr0n. I have a feeling this could be it:) /Rumagent

Better applications

[Twylite]

The article very definately uses the words "detect" (light behind) and "generate" (image in front). This implies it is not some passthrough technology (fiber, etc), but an electronic record and recreation.

If this "clock" could live up to its claims, there are three (possibly more) far more interesting applications that must be considered:

• Holographic photography: the photoreceptors on the back can apparently sense the intensity, colour and trajectory. They can also do this without a lens. Impressive.
• Holographic projection / 3D TV: the light emitters on the front can recreate the image behind the object. In order to do this with enough accuracy to clock an object, they have to recreate the trajectory of the light; failing this they have a 2D image which will be noticable as soon as the viewer moves.
• Realistic looking TV: apart from the 2D/3D problem, TV just doesn't look real because it is poor at depecting matt textures. A glowing, glossy area within your field of vision would certainly attract your attention, even if it fitted into the background.

Given that researchers would be coining it from more down-to-earth inventions like these, I can't really see that the technology - as described - exists or is being developed.

Re:Better applications

[HiThere]

Doing the detection without a lens is easy. Just use a fly's eye approach. A detector at the bottom of an opaque cylinder with the top off (or even a simple lens at the top). If the background was relatively stable, you could use a rotating filter, but it might be better to use triple the number of detectors, and parcel them out in triads, with each cylinder having a filter at the top for R, G, or G. (Sort of the opposite of a tv screen.)

As to the resolution... nobody's said just how good it is. How good it would need to be would depend on it's intended purpose.

Re:Better applications

[hoggoth]

> If this "clock" could live up to its claims...
> to clock an object...

Why can't you write "cloak". Try it... Cl-oooooooooooo-ak. Try it again.

Re:Better applications

[Twylite]

#define c BAD_ENGLISH
c++

You don't honestly think I type "clock" in day to day life, do you?

ARGH!!

Re:Better applications

[Anonymous Coward]

Well of course not. This is just another one of those speculative and overly broad patents which are passed all the time by idiot examiners. All it really does is describe at a dictionary-definition level roughly what an early invisibility device is likely to look like. The guy clearly realizes that the first of these devices is likely to arrive sooner rather than later and this patent is designed to ensure that when that happens he'll get a piece of the action even if he never manages to build a convincing working prototype himself.

Walnut-sized Nuclear Reactor

[baldass_newbie]

I always thought one of the coolest gadgets mentioned in Sci-Fi was the 'reactor' for the personal shield generator in the Foundation Trilogy.
It was the size of a walnut. Of course, it didn't last very long, but a walnut-sized reactor would still be pretty cool (albeit very unlikely.)

Re:Walnut-sized Nuclear Reactor

[snake_dad]

The ones that didn't last very long were specially crafted, so they could be used as bribes on non-Foundation planets. Don't spread FUD on good old Foundation Technology! :)

Re:Walnut-sized Nuclear Reactor

[baldass_newbie]

The ones that didn't last very long were specially crafted, so they could be used as bribes on non-Foundation planets.

I thought that was the case, but I haven't read them in almost 17 years.

Either way, it's still pretty cool.

Re:Walnut-sized Nuclear Reactor

[HiThere]

We make them smaller than that! (Of course, they don't produce much power. We use them to ionize the air in smoke alarms. Americium powered, if I recall correctly.)

We could probably make them the size of a zippo and get real power out of them, but you probably wouldn't want to carry it around with you... that size doesn't include the shielding. And I'm not sure how much power it would produce, my guess is enough for a transistor radio.

Additionally, some of the nano-tech machinery being invented is nuclear powered. At that size they don't require enough power to be dangerous. (Again, it's lack of shielding that makes it workable.)

Re:Walnut-sized Nuclear Reactor

[RegularFry]

Uh... The americium only acts as a radiation source. The smoke alarm still needs a battery (or mains connection) to actually do anything useful with the detected radiation levels. The deep space probes have used radioactive fuel cells driving thermopiles - it's the grey cylinder sticking out of the side in this picture. On a smaller scale, there's this little wonder, which just about fills your gap.

Good camoflage though ...

[Titusdot Groan]

Because of angles of viewing etc. this wouldn't make you invisible -- this would be great camoflage though -- you'd match the color and light of the background almost perfectly.

The most important part of camoflage is making recognizable features hard to see -- hands, faces, etc -- things our visual system is hardwired to pickup out of the background. This invisibility cloak would do that.

I imagine it looking like the Alien in that Arnold movie, hard to see unless it's moving and then the distortions give it away.

Of course is this a really old idea -- heck it a similiar idea was in comics in the 1970s (some super heros club house had this kind of device to hide it from view).

Cloak of Invisibility available for years

[Anonymous Coward]

Simply

• Go to your nearest bar
  
• drink 10 - 15 pints of strong lager
  

after that it doesn't matter who you try and talk to they appear to not be able to see you....

Old news

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

A freind of mine told me about this a while ago. His father was in the Navy.

SR-71 paint schemes

[FirstNoel]

I've seen different paint schemes done on planes, specifically the SR-71, which have the under-carriage painted silver/white. I've often wondered if the brightness of the plane to the sky was the reason for it.

I guess that answers that question.

Sean D.

Re:SR-71 paint schemes

[Anonymous Coward]

even fishes uses this.. bright under and dark on the top

Re:SR-71 paint schemes

[Anonymous Coward]

more accurately, the fish don't use it - the ones colored that way are the ones that survive

What no Screen Shots?

[jellomizer]

I was hoping to see the cloak in action. :-)

Re:Practicality? Comoflage

[Forge]

One principle of comoflage is that you don't have to be invisible. People just have to not actualy notice your presence.

This means that an imperfect cloak (skin fit chamelian suite) would work great for the usual infiltration, espionage and assasination type functions.

At least it would be better that a black catsuite.

I'll believe it...

[yelims]

...when I see it.

Sorry, it had to be said.

Re:I'll believe it...

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, I'll believe it when I DON'T see it.

I've seen one of these ...

[mustangdavis]

I saw one of these cloaks on the TV show VIP (Pam Anderson) yesterday during the TNT VIP marathon .... does this also mean that the future also has lots of large breasted, athletic ladies working as police officers as well???

Just imagine what you could do with them while invisible! (but then again, maybe you'd want your friends to see what was going on so you would have proof!)

Perfect bad patent

[RichMan]

This is a pretty near perfect example of a bad patent.
1) the idea is pretty obvious (as well as many references in common SF literature)
2) the actual implementation with current tech will be pretty miserable. Put big bright light behind object, make object shine big bright light at viewer. Viewer is blinded by both and as object is indistinquishable the technique is easily demonstrated to the patent requirement level.
3) it serves as a patent stake. Further research into a better/improved technology will have to deal with this patent.

This is a near perfect bad patent that grants the patent holder a big stake in the ground for actually showing very little. And any future work that will actually improve the technique is going to have to deal with the patent.

Re:Perfect bad patent

[Anonymous Coward]

...there is prior art. Think back to WWII, and the planes (british Sutherland seaplanes, American bombers) that hunted U-Boats. They figured out that one could put several lights in the leading edge of the wings, and the planes could get much closer before being identified and shot at. It was enough to make their torpedoing and depth charging of U-Boats more effective.

I don't think that the goal of this is "walk-past" invisible (i.e., if you walk right past it you won't be able to see it), but just to make certain things much harder to see than they are now.

If it is patented, the first civilian versions will be for deer and turkey hunters...

If you've ever seen with your own eyes how effective a "gillie" suit is, you'll know that this will probably not be as effective...

Re:Perfect bad patent

[Sebastopol]

Doesn't the inventor at least have to have a prototype or some way of building it for it to get a patent?

Re:Perfect bad patent

[Bones3D_mac]

I wonder if I could patent the process of solving a problem with a solution. ;-)

Re:Perfect bad patent

[johnjay]

Isn't the army looking into some sort of camouflage using the same technology? I believe I saw a reference to it in slashdot, but I can't remember where. There's some discussion of it in this press release. So, it could be that the company (or person?) Ray Alden hopes to get rich quick by putting a patent in place before the army and MIT do any actual developement.

Re:Perfect bad patent

[Mr Rohan]

This is a pretty near perfect example of a bad patent.

Or maybe it's a very clever attempt to prevent future (i.e. > 20 years away) patenting of invisibility mechanisms.... :->

Re:Perfect bad patent

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the Slashdot Karma whore formula for dismissing any and all patents. Let's see how it works:

"The airplane engine is a near perfect example of a bad patent.

1. The idea is pretty obvious, merely an extension of the internal combustion engine to hot air balloons. (as well as many references in Greek mythology)

2. The actual implementation with current tech will be pretty miserable. Wooden frames for wings, high fuel consumption and great danger to the pilot and passengers.

3. It serves as a patent stake. Further research into better/improved technology will have to deal with this patent."

Re:Perfect bad patent

[mibus]

1) Obvious?? I "invented" it by the time I was twelve! Except of course, I'd allowed for multiple angles to be hidden by having the cameras/emitters at different angles.

(If only I'd had enough money to actually implement my plans... :-)

Re:Perfect bad patent

[Wild Ennui]

True. This is how the 'great and prolific' inventor Lemulson (now dead but his legal spectre lives on) made his money. It's the patent office equivalent of chasing ambulances.

Viewable Angle?

[Junior J. Junior III]

This is interesting, but will be of rather limited usefulness if the viewable angle is not very wide.

Doesn't seem possible.

[mborysow]

Even if this intended to be just one way. You'd have to have very little light coming from the direction of the intended person to be "blinded." This would assume that this cloak will absorb *all* (up to a point that's observable) the light that would have reflected off of it and to the observer. Well, perfect black body's just don't exist. There'll always be likely to have a reflection come off of this thing.

That's just the beginning, I don't think we're anywhere near having what's essentially an instantly recorded and rebroadcast super high resolution wrappable screen. The way, though I could be mistaken, that most light sources are created even in high definition display devices, will allow for scattering, so the image you would see where the person should be would be blurry. You'd have to get pretty close to duplicating every photon. Not nearly so accurately of course since the human eye isn't so good, but still.

Anyway, I'm just stupid. /me wanders away.

On Sale

[YearOfTheDragon]

You can buy one Cloak of Invisibility here ($9.99).

Uncle Sam and Cloakng

[Anonymous Coward]

We won't see this anytime soon, even if it is successful. The Military will probably snag this up in a heartbeat and declare it vital to National Security.

In a "post 9-11 world" (whatever), something like this could, in some paranoid government theory, slip into the hands of terrorists and give them some sort of advantage in their idiotic jihad against America. Either that, or they'd claim it for our own military and make it off-limits to us regular sheep.

Shouldn't we be working on food replicators or something, thereby eliminating something important like hunger?

more BS from a marketing convention

[f00zbll]

Yeah, lets all get excited over nothing. The practicality vs cost of this "cloaking" device is obviously beyond the reach of most companies and individuals. The only organizations that could/would fund this kind of research is the military. As everyone knows more taxes will go towards this assinine research, with no usable results. There might be valuable research that will be marketable, but lets get real people. This is simply more BS.

I'd rather people spend money on things like improving the quality of living and cleaning up all the trash we generate every day. With so many G_d damn problems, why the f_ck are we wasting time with invisibility cloaks?

/ rant

nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

The military already was working on doing the EXACT same thing. They use fiber optic cabling to achieve this from what I've read. Doesn't do squat once an anti tank missile hits u though lol

Holograms

[WickedChicken]

One of the ideas that I believe Metal Gear SOlid had was that of having fiber-optics woven into a hologram. That way depending on the angle you looked at it, it would chose a different set of fibers and thus a different angle.

Re:Holograms

[tunesmith]

An invisible hologram? How pointless is that?

Re:Holograms

[WickedChicken]

well, if you consider that most "visible" holograms are just one side of the hologram, very useful. the "real" way to use a hologram is to shine a laser at it, producing a "real" 3D image on the opposite side of what you normally look at.

Depth perception

[Myco]

Many have already pointed out the most obvious problem -- any angle other than straight on is going to wreck the effect. But let's not forget that a human with two functional, open eyes never views an object from just one angle (unless one eye's view of the object is obstructed -- geez, picky...). Ah, the miracle of depth perception. I don't think this method is nearly sophisticated enough to compensate for all the subtle clues we get from our binocular vision. Nice try, though. I mean, I think that everyone who's considered the possibility of invisibility has come up with a scheme like this. It's nice to see it coming closer to reality, but we all know that at this stage it's too limited except for perhaps certain special circumstances. But yeah, I want one too.

Still More Limitations

[swb]

It also doesn't do much for your heat signiture. Since so much military surveillance is done with IR, you'd think that the extra heat generated by the thing being cloacked and the cloaking mechanism that it'd glow like a light bulb under IR.

Re:Still More Limitations

[Steve Cox]

Whereas is glows like millions of little light bulbs in visible light :)

Steve.

Re:Still More Limitations

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean thermal imaging. Infrared really has nothing to do with heat as far as detection goes, just light spectrums. And as someone who spent 8 years in the US Marine Corps as a infantryman, I can tell you we typically used light gather night vision gear, nothing heat related (which is less useful during the daytime, regardless). So this has plenty of pratical application.

Re:Still More Limitations

[swb]

I think you mean thermal imaging. Infrared really has nothing to do with heat as far as detection goes, just light spectrums.

Radiated heat is infrared, isn't it?

Re:Still More Limitations

[Anonymous Coward]

Radiated heat is infrared, isn't it?

How hot is your remote control?

Re:Still More Limitations

[Anonymous Coward]

infrared, infra- (latin, below) red, the red portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Has nothing to do with heat per se. People tend to use it as a short-hand for heat detection, because objects near the surface of the earth that we regard as warm do tend to radiate in the infrared portion of the spectrum. I don't remember the formula off the top of my head, but the temperature of the object determines the specific wavelength at which the object radiates. The hotter the object, the shorter the wavelength.

It's one of the things that bothers me about tree-huggers wanting to do away with "radiation." Not only is it impossible to do away with, but if you could, you'd kill everything in the universe anyway!

Re:Still More Limitations

[mmol_6453]

As a probationary firefighter, I've seen it used to search a home for (whatever caused the smoke detector to go off without showing flame). You can see a hotspot clear as day, even through that sheet of concrete some people use to shield their walls from the furnace.

I can't imagine anything less is going to stop the IR.

Now, if someone would be bright enough to invent a polymer that blocked IR, you could build blankets, sleeping bags and uniforms out of the stuff. Soldiers could sleep out in the open, and wouldn't be visible by satellite, at night.

Re:Still More Limitations

[MikeTheYak]

Blocking IR is the easy part. The problem is that your blocking substance would eventually heat up, and then would itself start emitting IR. Waste heat is a problem with no known easy solution because of the laws of thermodynamics. A human body generates heat, and that heat energy has to go somewhere. Generally it gets emitted as IR.

What you'd need is not so much an IR blocker (though it would have to do that as well), but something that can absorb a lot of heat without changing temperature much. You can't actually get around the fact that a garment made of such a substance would eventually heat up to something close to human body temperature, but you can at least delay the effect. To the best of my knowledge, we're nowhere near being able to do this with current technology.

Re:Still More Limitations

[_ph1ux_]

as we all know from watching commando - all you have to do to hide your heat signature is cover yourself in mud.

Re:Still More Limitations

[swb]

Polar bears! I saw a teevee special about the polar bears near Hudson Bay and they viewed polar bears through some heat-detecting camera and the polar bear insulation was so good that they barely showed up.

Re: Still More Limitations

[Anonymous Coward]

The movie you are referring to is Predator, not Commando. While both are Arnold movies, there was no alien whose vision included the IR range in Commando.

Re: Still More Limitations

[_ph1ux_]

HEH. OOPS ;P

Re:Still More Limitations

[mmol_6453]

To absorb a lot of heat, with current technology, an object would have to be dense, like a iron skillet. Then you have to find a way to cool it quickly, without shattering it.

Or you could use heat-regulated chemical coldpacks. Though somewhat bulky, they'd be able to take care of it. More than a little dangerous if they malfunction in cold weather, though. "malfunction" meaning "run unchecked"

Heck, you could use those electric heat sinks that behave as electrically-powered heat pumps. Surround a ten-pound cast-iron(or other dense thermal conductor) ball with it, run a water-based transport (like water cooling) mesh over the person and around the thermal ball. Apply power one way to absorb height. Apply power the other way to release it.

The larger

Re:Still More Limitations

[budgenator]

Radiated heat is infrared, isn't it?
basicaly true but when the millitary say infrared, they are talking about blackbody radiation in the 1000 -500 K area and slightly cooler, when they say thermal they mean 500 - 200 K (tank exhaust temp down through body temperature) blackbody radiation. Yes that means if the ambiant air temp is 70 degrees you'll look like you are glowing in thermal sights, if the air temp is 99 degrees you are invisible and the air temp is 120 you look dark.

Re:Still More Limitations

[Anonymous Coward]

It's one of the things that bothers me about tree-huggers wanting to do away with "radiation." Not only is it impossible to do away with, but if you could, you'd kill everything in the universe anyway!

That's one of the things that bothers me about anti-environmentalist idiots: their love of straw man arguments.

Re:Still More Limitations

[cosyne]

It also doesn't do much for your heat signiture. Since so much military surveillance is done with IR, you'd think that the extra heat generated by the thing being cloacked and the cloaking mechanism that it'd glow like a light bulb under IR.

So your concern is that although this thing will take on the appearance of the background in the human visible spectrum (approx 380(blue) to 780(red) nanometers), it will not resemble the background radiation at other wavelengths. Not a trivial problem, but not impossible. As long as the cloaking system has the same sensory capabilites as the entity it's hiding from, it knows what appearance to present.
Generating more radiation is seldom a problem. Reducing radiation is harder, especially in the longwave IR (heat) section of the spectrum, which seems to be at issue here. Generally, you can block eletromagnetic radiatiton, but the energy goes to heat. If you want to hide a heat signature, you could do it with the appropriate combination of thermally massive shields, active and/or very good thermal control systems, and something to do with the excess heat. You could try to radiate it in another direction, but the beam would probably be visible to a thermal camera. You might be able to store it if you have a thermos full of butt-ass cold. I'd probably use a flask of liquid nitrogen to absorb the heat, and then release a nitrogen stream at ambient temp. (This could in theory be detected as well, but nitrogen is the majority of the atmosphere, so it's probably hard to detect as long as you get the temp right.
Once you block the heat that you and your cloaking device emit, you can then use you radiation emitters (leds, OLEDs, incandescents, whathaveyou) to emit the right intensities in the right wavelengts as your background. How you get the direction of the light rigth for all obsevrers is beyond me, but that's why it's not my patent. (If you just want to hide from one observer, you basically just get a tv and a camera, hold the tv between you and the observer, and the camera colinear with all three of you (observer, tv, you).)

ok. now then, for the rest of this discussion. Where to start? How bout polar bears, 'cause they kick azz.
Polar bears are supposedly (google it yourself) so well insulated that if you use a thermal camera from an airplane, all you see is footprints because the only points where they leak enough heat to differ from ambient temp is the pads of their feet.

Next: The em spectrum. As i said, humans (most of you, anyways) see from about 380nm to 780nm. Shorter wavelength, higher energy photons are ultraviolet (above violet, hence the sunburn) and so on up to X and gamma rays. Longer wavelength photons are infrared (lower energy, below red) and microwaves and radio and such. Current topic: IR. Near IR (close to visible) is from like 800nm up to around 1100 (depending on who you ask). This is what you tend to get from IRLEDs. Think remote controls, sony camcorder night vision, and other stuff you can see with a black and white camera with no IR filter. (You can't see much further 'cause silicon starts being transparent around 1050nm).
And then there's far IR, more in the 3000 to 8000 nm range, AKA heat. (to see this look into vidicon tubes or thermistor sensors by hamamatsu or indigo). This is even lower energy than near IR. Its everywhere you look, if you could see it, cause everything radiates in this range according to its temp. The spectrum being continuous (as spetcra generally are), if you take something at body temp it will radiate in this range, and if you heat it up enough it will start radiating in near IR and then red (AKA glowing) and then up to white if you get it hot enough.

Military night vision. Don't know too much about that, but if it's not heat-based you can basically use really sensitive equipment for detecting ambient light (huge lenses and high-gain CCDs) or use near IR illumination (most of your commerical 'night vision' systems).

Tree huggers and radiation. It's the high energy radiation from i.e. nuclear plants (isotope decay is a good source of gamma radiation) that a lot of people worry about. Granted, there are those who worry about microwave radiotion from ovens and cordelss phones (and probably 802.11 if you told them it was microwave), but their mistake is not understanding the EM spectrum and thinking that all radiation is dangerous, not just high energy radiation. (and yes, i could be wrong and low energy radiation could be really harmful too. but i'm still not buying any kind of cellphone shield).

IR going through contrete walls. No. The wall will absorb heat, heat up, and then radiate at a higher energy than the other walls, but the energy is not going through like visible light through glass.

IR blocking polymers. Mylar.

Thermoelectric heat transfer. Peltier junctions. about %10 efficient. if you dont mind expending a lot of energy to cool your chip and have a good place to dump the heat, they rock. They dont get read of heat, they just move it, so unless you have somewhere to move it to, they wont hide you from a thermal camera.

Ok, think that's about it. Hopefully this clears some stuff up.

Re:Still More Limitations

[I. M. Bur]

I am sure you realize how cold it would be inside one of these... Absorbing heat means that the thing is cold, which means having such a material to sleep in is a reat PITA

Re:Still More Limitations

[mmol_6453]

Not to mention dangerous.

But, hey, I'm probably not the only one who turns his pillow over three or four times a night because it's cooler on the other side.

Doesn't sound practical...

[lquam]

...for the Constitution class starship I've got parked in orbit. I guess I'll just have to slap on a coat of black paint and hang over the magnetic poles until I can steal a real cloaking device from the Romulans.

Re:Doesn't sound practical...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Treaty of Algeron says the Federation is not to engage in cloaking device research. Looks like you have a long wait :)

Re:Doesn't sound practical...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bugga! Does stealing it from the Klingons count as research?

Re:Doesn't sound practical...

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the idea of that show "THe Invisible Man", thats a perfect example how it might work. Except for the apparent defects the gland would cause, in the begginning stages problems. But once perfected and cloned give user ability to go invisble.

Geez.

[Gannoc]

Wouldn't it be easier just to drill a hole into the girl's locker room?

I mean, its not as high tech, but its a lot cheaper.

Re:Geez.

[Anonymous Coward]

not as easy as it was to drill a hole in your mom's "locker room" last night.

SOP

[Anonymous Coward]

As everyone know, it is very expensive to make an object invisible. But to make it someone others problem is quite easy, if one is to believe the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Usually noone can se me as I am someone others problem, aka. an Anonymous Coward. :-)

Re:Practicality? Comoflage

[Anonymous Coward]

This would be great for work. Stick this bad boy on then go right up to the boss and slap him! :)

Done before

[Anonymous Coward]

/. has been making computers disappear for years.

It would be more feasable

[Anonymous Coward]

Invisibility would be more realistic if the light rays were BENT around the subject, rather than replicated. AS pointed out, replicating light would only produce a chamelion effect, and is only useful if the subject sticks close to walls. Even then, shade is a major problem, as the subjects body blocks light from illuminating the wall surface, ann thereby prevents accurate optical replication. Besides, will the optical transmitter be luminecent or just colored?? CRT vs LCD?
Back to light bending. At the momment, light reays are known to be effected by massive gravity wells (ex. stars, black holes, white dwarfs, toothpaste). However, such gravity wells are equally detrimental to the subject. We must remember however, that light is a self-propigation of an electic and magnetic field at right angles to one another. If you could somehow influence one field to bend, i would expect the other would follow in suit.
Nevertheless, rest assured as soon as bending electromagnetic waves are patented, tractor beams,repultion shields and hyperdrives will be soon to follow.

Hell yes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmmmm.... Invisible pr0n.... /yomamma

And Heisenberg in all that?

[jeffasselin]

What about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle? I mean, it would be impossible for the device to actually ascertain the direction AND location of the light coming at it, and it would thus be difficult to reproduce it perfectly.

I'm not sure how it would translate in reality, but all the little errors would certainly amount to a significant shimmering effect, or artifacts that would appear weird to the eye, but might pass off in an environment with shadows.

It would also be easy to actually detect such a person with the appropriate equipment by using a simple variation on quantum light-encryption methods, by sending light particles (laser would do nicely) and record their polarity at the ouput and at the receiving end. Any significant disparity (there would always be some due to air interfering) would indicate abnormal light absorption and resending.

And what about heat? Such a device would produce a significant output of heat, which added to a human being's output would probably alarm even a normal sensitive human being to something being weird around, and would be easily visible to infrared cameras.

A simple light-refraction device like this would not work very well to produce invisibility, IMHO. It might have some specific applications but little practical use.

Amazing!

[CrosseyedPainless]

"The idea of an "invisibility cloak" has made the leap from science fiction books to an international patent application.

<sarcasm>
That's supposed to be a leap? Somebody hasn't been keeping up with patents lately....
</sarcasm>

Churchs Scream Evil

[hound3000]

When major religions learned that an invisibility cloak (Google Cache) had been invented many started screaming about how they knew none of this Harry Potter nonsense would come to absolutely no good. In other news, most of world, still awaits Harry Potter Book 5.

Weird Coincidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last 3 posts on slashdot: Uncloaking Terrorist Networks, Robotic Photographer, Cloak of Invisibility Coming Soon?

Be pretty terrible if those terrorist got some of those invisbility cloaks, than our robotic photographer trashcan will never be able to detect those terrorist networks.

Panthers Modern, anyone?

[Ride-My-Rocket]

Ever since I read William Gibson's "Neuromancer" for the first time, invisibility has always been synonymous with the Panthers Modern's mimetic polycarbon suits. The graphic novel only served to burn this image into my mind even more by giving form to how it would look / work / be used.

Too cool. They should hand these out to Delta Force and snipers once they've been refined a few times over. Then they'll really be something to be afraid of -- living, heavily armed ghosts.

did I miss...

[tiedyejeremy]

who is it that is applying for this patent? Who has been doing the research? Any additional information available? If I had one of these, it would make it easier to tell the wife and kids that "I was standing right there watching, didn't you see me?"

Nope

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

The Mona Lisa blocks light on the wall behind it. You'd see a black patch on the wall, because there'd be no light. To get this to work, you'd have to mimic light going in both directions, so that the lights in the room would "pass through" the cloak and hit the wall behind it, then bounce off and "pass through" the cloak again.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point, I hadn't thought of that when I made my laptopscreenandwebcam prototype.. looks like I need 2 screens and 2 webcams.

Re:Nope

[sallen]

The Mona Lisa blocks light on the wall behind it. You'd see a black patch on the wall, because there'd be no light. To get this to work, you'd have to mimic light going in both directions, so that the lights in the room would "pass through" the cloak and hit the wall behind it, then bounce off and "pass through" the cloak again.

I don't see it being patented, as the thought of an image being, essentially, transfered from what is behind something to in front of an object has been discussed for eon's (or at least years). The process, however, is a lot more difficult than at least mentioned in the small news clip. You're right about blocking light behind it, in relation to the Mona Lisa.
But I believe there's a third item which comes into play. For us to see something, there are three variables involved. The source (and intensity) of the light, the object itself (and how it reflects the light) and our eyes, upon which the light falls, for us to see the image. The 'image' or the object we all see, varies to a degree based upon there we stand. To 'cloak' simply using the process mentioned cannot overcome the fact that we all observe the object differently if we're each standing in a different place, and that doesn't seem to be taken into consideration. The simpliest part of the viewers position (though there are many), is the part of depth perception. If we're three feet from the wall behind the object, and two feet from the Mona Lisa, then 'cloaking' the Mona Lisa has a 'wall', a portion which is displaced from the real one, 'appear' other than in the same plane as the real wall. Part will look further away then the part of the wall that is closer (the cloaked Mona Lisa), because the light will be generated/reflected from a different distance from the 'real' wall. One MIGHT be able to compensate that difference by altering the output and seemingly making the object, but hues/density, etc, seem elsewhere... exactly where the real wall is located. But that works one person standing in exactly the same spot for which the compensation is calculated. A person 10 degrees offset sees a different perception...I don't see how one compensates for that.

If the object is an extreme distance where depth perception is essentially nil or in a dim setting there depth is also less acute, then it is more 'believed' by the viewer. Otherwise, as long as one has two eyes, I see a problem.

Re:Nope

[j_stirk]

If the object is an extreme distance where depth perception is essentially nil or in a dim setting there depth is also less acute, then it is more 'believed' by the viewer. Otherwise, as long as one has two eyes, I see a problem.

Then maybe you need a Cloak of Invisibility so as that you don't see the problem...

Yes, I appologise for the pun...

Re:Nope

[Blahbbs]

I'm guessing that the initial application would be for reducing the visibility of an object on a battle field, where emulating local light sources (which would cause problems as described above) is largely unnecessary. The only light you may have to deal with is sun and sky.

Re:Nope

[Arcaeris]

The Mona Lisa blocks light on the wall behind it. You'd see a black patch on the wall, because there'd be no light. To get this to work, you'd have to mimic light going in both directions, so that the lights in the room would "pass through" the cloak and hit the wall behind it, then bounce off and "pass through" the cloak again.

Huh? As I understand it, everything reflects light. If this cloak of invisibility works as it is intended, you could be very much concealed. The painting/couch/whatever-the-hell behind the person would be obscured by the person, yes, but the light reflected from the object to the back of the "cloak" should be represented on the front of the "cloak." Thus, standing in front of a couch should create a picture of the couch on the front of the "cloak." Thus, to the man looking from the front at the "cloak"-wearing man, he sees the room that lies behind the "cloak"-wearing man.

The real problem will be perspective, depth perception, and dealing with visual acuity. Sure, the guy in the front might be easily confused, but 10 people in a room at different angles and positions would see a man-shaped object with a couch-image spiraling around him pretty quickly and easily.

Of course, I put "cloak" in quotes because what I'm picturing is more of a poncho or drape-type garment. An actual cloak would leave some parts still visible, like a Megadeth t-shirt underneath. So no move silently bonus or ACS bonus, but +10 to hide in shadows.

Re:Nope

[jx100]

But if you put another cloak on the back, then light would pass though the cloak and onto the wall behind it and illuminate it.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

This Was Actually done quite a few years ago. The US army was working on it for quite some time. IT was even on tv on discovery channel. I know most people like to avoid that channel, but i like to watching something that isnt a stupid sitcom.

Re:Nope

[serial_crusher]

the simple solution to this would be to have both receptors and emittors on either side, and have them alternate faster than the human eye could interpret them.

Wouldn't curved objects also cause a problem? the light would bounce off of the object where it shouldn't. This would probably result in the same ripple looknig effect we see in the movies.

Re:Nope

[Jace of Fuse!]

Otherwise, as long as one has two eyes, I see a problem.

So we poke out one of the viewers eyes. Problem solved.

Re:Nope

[Toraz Chryx]

Yeah, but given the choice between being 100% visible on the battlefield and having a Predator style camoflauge, I'll go with the Pred tech thankyouvery much :)

Re:Nope

[Mithy]

So we poke out one of the viewers eyes. Problem solved.

A better solution: if you poked out both their eyes, you wouldn't need a cloak.

And this is a good thing?

[Guppy06]

I look at this and I can't help but think of the ol' Cloak of Darkness out of Wizards & Warriors.

Thou hath wasted thy fucking time

Re:And this is a good thing?

[Decimal]

Yeah. Thought the same thing when I saw the title. Now I'll have the sound of Treasure Chest Gems raking up stuck in my head for the rest of the week.

Blee-dee blee-dee blee-dee blee-dee blee-dee...

Thanks, Slashdot!

Patent Office Link

[euphline]

I had troubles getting a good link that works, but... here's the best shot:

Username: guest Password:guest

It doesn't have much, but there is a pretty picture!

-jbn

Where's the Beef?

[narftrek]

Is it just me or does anyone else need more than 2 or 3 paragraphs to really believe this? I mean where's the details? A few photos or something please! Otherwise it's all just speculation. Hell I could write an article saying I invented cloaking technology in a few paragraphs. Looks like more vaporware to me.

At least Duke Nuke 3D had some screenshots.....

Hopefully...

[l1gunman]

...they'll also discover the cure for "Quicksilver Madness" before this goes operational.

The Invisible Man

[Escape Tangent]

This is the second /. article in as many days that seems to contain a reference to television's The Inbisible Man. The other, of course, is the one about the Diabetes-Monitoring Tattoo. My point is, how far are we from synthesizing a material that can bend light to the point that no matter what direction it hits it from will be refracted around the surface to the other side (effectively producing a "straight line" like the photoreceptor concept)?

Terrorists already have them

[Pedrito]

According to this Slashdot article the terrorist networks are already "cloaked".

Man, these stories are only two apart and nobody has connected the dots yet? Obviously these guys are working for the other side and need to be dealt with appropriately.

Show us the tech

[Savant]

The concept here doesn't look like revolutionary thinking; I'm fairly certain I've seen descriptions of similar devices in sci-fi, and the idea of painting input from the other side onto the output from the other is a pretty obvious way to take a stab at "invisibility". I'm hoping that the patent is based on having at least a semi-working prototype rather than being a pure concept patent.

In any case, if you're using it on irregular shapes like clothing, you'll run into interesting texture-mapping/scaling problems trying to map the input to the output; you'll need to be able to work out the exact locations of your receptors on some kind of internal co-ordinate system to make things work. This means that, for clothing, you'd need to work out exact body orientation and movement. For this you'd need to first build a superbly accurate body suit that tracks motion with very low error margins... which we're not all that close to at present. And that's assuming nice tight clothing without those horrid hard-to-calculate folds.

Bottom line: Can't see an invisibility cloak, or any invisibility clothing lines any time soon. Would consider it *possibly* feasible with current technology to build a static regular shell (perhaps hemispherical) which could conceal what's under it.

Savant

Topic should be different

[calmdude]

It should have been the einstein head instead of the motherboard.

US PTO

[euphline]

Here's a more detailed account from the US PTO.

-jbn

It's called gambling

[yerricde]

when someone else in the future figures out how to make a bona-fide cloaking device (complete with that awesome Romulan warbird cloaking sound), he'll charge them a licensing fee for their design because he already patented the basic idea.

In that case, it's called gambling. Patents last 20 years after filing in most jurisdictions because the late Sonny "Treehugger" Bono never managed to touch patents. Thus, Ray Alden is making a bet that a cloaking device will be developed within the next twenty years.

what if it's only, say, 10% functional? Not at all useful

Except for a well-done camouflage suit, where a little goes a long way.

Perfectly symmetrical soldier

[clickety6]

I wonder how he intends to get round nthe fact that the back of a soldier is nothing like the front of a soldier and the clothing needs to be flexible and will change shape, so you can't just link sensors one to one. Unless the camoflauge outfit is shaped like a rigid barrel, you not only need to know what's behidn you, but you also need to know the exact shape and position of the "cloak". How is that done?

Except for the shadow...

[BobMcD]

The geniuses behind this one have left out an important issue: the shadow. Even though the backside light is mimicked, the light hitting the frontside is still reflected back. As such, this couldn't really be used if there's a light source overhead... But it's a start, right?

I made one of these. Now I can't find it!

[Bubblesculpter]

I made one of these before...

...Now I can't find it.

An effective countermeasure...

[CommieLib]

Would be to flood an area with high intensity light. The re-emitters will be strongly limited in how much light they can throw out, and what you would see would be a moving dark spot (still looking like the ground beneath him) against a light background.

I made a prototype

[Anonymous Coward]

Initially all my prototype does is display what's behind my laptop on it's screen using an old webcam. This system helps the screen blend into the background, and from the correct viewing angle it appears invisible apart from the border around the LCD.

My next version might include more webcams and a PC which controls mulitple LCD screens mounted around the outside of my car.

Pretty hi-tech eh?

Re:I made a prototype

[Anonymous Coward]

And thinking about it some more, the original Sony Vaio notebooks with built-in cameras that could be pointed to show the area behind the screen probably have prior art on my idea.

Jack London's "The Shadow and the Flash"

[dpbsmith]

...is an amusing century-old story about competitive brothers who devise two different methods of achieving invisibility. It's online here.

In his fictional story, both methods have problems. The problems are more than fictional, since one of the methods relies on the nonsense supposition that since black is the absence of light, the only reason you can see something that's black is that the black isn't PERFECTLY black, and that if you could achieve perfect blackness you could achieve invisibility.

However, the method described in the parent article here is equally flawed, since it would work only for an observer placed in a specific view location. One wonders how the equipment is supposed to locate the observer; if there are several observers, how does it decide which of them should be prevented from seeing the object?

The method bears a close resemblance to Hollywood special effects processes (glass shots, matte shots, etc.) Special effects processes are notorious for having visible edge effects if not done carefully, and I'm sure this would be true of the proposed method as well.

In "The Shadow and the Flash," one invisibility cloak could be detected by a sensation of darkness and depression whenever the concealed individual was nearby; the other suffered from occasional rainbow flashes due to mismatches in the index of refraction. I'm sure that the proposed method would have similar problems.

Re:Jack London's "The Shadow and the Flash"

[Soup50]

I don't think you got it. The efect does not need to "locate" anything. It works 360 degrees. If you are looking at my front and I am wearing this suit, the suit displays the light intensity and color from behind me on the front of the suit. likewise for someone behind me. They see the light color and intensity from the front of me. The real problem would be it's effective range and location. It would be extremely difficult to see someone in one of these 50ft from you in the jungle. It would be pretty easy, I would think, to see someone 10 ft from you in the city.

Visible wavelengths only?

[Winterblink]

That'd make it useless in combat situations if the opposing force has detection gear for infrared. I'm sure the thing generates an awful lot of heat!

smoke and mirrors..

[Suppafly]

So basically its a very complicated method of using the old smoke and mirrors affect that magicians have employed for years?

Re:smoke and mirrors..

[binkley]

Well, yes, but this is precisely what Invisiblity means. The light wavefront is unchanged by the intervening object. This is the same sense in which glass is invisible, easily demonstrated by birds which accidently fly into large plates of glass they didn't see.

Re:Practicality? Comoflage

[Peter Harris]

One principle of comoflage is that you don't have to be invisible. People just have to not actualy notice your presence.

So in fact you would be better off being in plain sight, looking like someone/thing normal and harmless.Since that can be done very cheaply and without fancy technology, I think it will remain the preferred method of infiltration.

Or use both: A delivery guy with a cardboard box and clipboard can walk past while guards surround the guy in the suspicious skin-tight chameleon suit.

Can they fire phasers while cloaked?

[goatwarrior]

We won't be ahead of the Klingons until we can fire phasers while cloaked.

Re:Can they fire phasers while cloaked?

[WetCat]

If you read the implementation, you should be sure that
it's possible.

Cloak of Life

[stinkyfingers]

When can we get something that you throw over your body and it makes you look like you're not sitting at a computer, surfing for porno and MP3s? Preferably, it will also make one look showered and cleansed and not have wasted the last 18 hours hacking a Linux kernel.

BSOD

[ravenwolff]

Let's hope this thing doesn't run WinCE/Win*, I doubt a BSOD would blend in with anything...

Parallax?

[dunedan]

see subject

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Treaty Violation?

[Anonymous Coward]

The act of applying for and receiving a patent for a cloaking device is one thing, but actually *building* one would be a direct violation of our treaty with the Romulan Star Empire. IANAL, but that's how *I* read the treaty.

Re:It's only a patent???

[Tenebrious1]

Only a patent

Haven't you been reading any other articles lately? Only a patent? You mean like Amazon's "one click" patent? Like BT's patent of hyperlinks? Compuserve GIFS? A laser pointer as an exercise device for a cat? The patent on a swing?

No, it's not a new idea. The military has been playing with it for years. Deep sea fish do it naturally with bioluminesence. If they get a working model, then ok, give them a patent. But I'd hate to see another ridiculous patent granted on an idea that's been around for decades.

two dimentional

[wheel]

The image behind you is rendered in 2-d, which means that this only works if the onlooker has one eye closed (or is blind in one eye).

Non-military applications...

[Hallow]

How about a house with sensors on the outside walls, and the projectors on the inside?

It would be like being outside, except the outside couldn't see or get in. And I'm sure it probably wouldn't transmit uva/uvb, so no sunburn. Imagine, no more sky windows. The ceiling could be the sky, complete with clouds. (Of course you could control the briteness, turn it off/on, etc.)

This could even replace windows in buildings you'd want more secured or where glass is a structural liability.

Re:Non-military applications...

[lovebyte]

Great! You could be an exhibitionist in secret. But that would defeat the purpose I guess!

Re:Non-military applications...

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

Great! Now most /.ers can see what this mythical land called "outside" looks like. :P

Re:Non-military applications...

[Rogerborg]

• How about a house with sensors on the outside walls, and the projectors on the inside?

Whoa there, let's not give Herr Ashcroft ideas. Imagine the sensors on the inside and the projectors on the outside. After all, only the guilty have something to hide, right?

Worthy of a patent?

[Andy Smith]

I remember talking about invisibility with friends after seeing the original Predator film.

The concept of light readers on one side of an object and light emitters on the other was an idea that was quickly proposed (by me) and then rejected (by me and others) because (a) it's too much of a "brute force" technique and not particularly scientific, (b) the required resolution to be 100% effective would be so high as to make it practically impossible, (c) it wouldn't stand up to any reasonable human scrutiny, never mind computer analysis, and (d) it would only work with fixed-shape objects, not people or animals, because any change in shape of the enshrouded object would produce distortion in the 'invisibility'. (Presumably this was the logic behind the shimmering effect of the alien in Predator?)

So I hope this patent application isn't successful unless it is *solely* for the implementation, not the idea. If they're trying to patent the idea then I want to claim prior art by at least ten years, even if we didn't get past the discussion stage.

And if I ever try to patent the idea then I expect Jim and John Thomas to take their turn at claiming prior art, and they should win. And I'm sure there were others before them.

Re:Worthy of a patent?

[Smid]

Man, I thought I was the only one...

We got to the conclusion that we needed to have a smooth form such as a sphere, detecting one side and emitting another, but then hit the old problem...

"It will be upside down"

So we came to the conclusion of needing an advanced "remapping" processor to readjust, but still it would be affected whenever it moved.

If this is the current level of brainpower though, people either don't make whacky movies anymore, or just don't think much about them...

Smid

Great, now we'll never get this

[dspeyer]

This technology has not made the leap from Science Fiction to reality, but from Science Fiction to a U.S. (EU?) Patent -- just a form of Science Fiction with a lousy plot and massive credibility holes. It thus follows in the path of the Universal Translator, and many other such devices. Sadly, if this actually is developed in the next decade, we won't be able to use it, because it's been patented.

Observe, a model doesn't need to work to be patented, but it does to be prior art. Something's wrong here...

More feasable than you might think

[Pitr]

I've actually played with this concept quite extensively with friends of mine. Bear in mind that invisibility is all about "perception", and the way human vision works. If you look at the way current camoflauge works, and why, then you'll see just how little you need to do to have a sizeable effect. There's a certain resolution that matters at a certain distance. At 10 feet(or was it meters) if an invisibility suit had "emitters" spaced roughly an inch appart, it would be barely noticeable(Based on 20/20 vision, your mileage may vary). The problem of viewing angle can be dealt with fairly easily, by using something as simple as a little geodesic prism on both sides of the object being "cloaked"(one per emitter/sensor). Assuming you're going for one inch spacing, you've now got a much less formidable manufacturing task. The only concerns from here are, 1) The simple method is to have simple circuits that read light on one side, and output it on the other, with intensity compensation(fairly easy), the *good* way is to incorporate a little anti-aliasing, which on say a person, is tricky due to the viewing angle problem(mainly due to you moving), and raw processing power required to work it out real time 2) Put on IR goggles, and you're still right there. 3) Occlusion of emmitters with other emitters. i.e. lets say your arm is in front of your chest. If your suit is perfect, there will be little effect, but for lower "resolution" suits, you'll get really wacky visual artifacts.

I only touched briefly on a few things which were fairly well covered in other comments, so if some of this doesn't make sense, or is a little vague, it may help to read some of the previous stuff.

And yes, I spent way too much time in high school plotting to become an evil genius.

Science fiction was there first

[kcollett]

Dean Ing had a novel called The Ransom of Black Stealth One which had a plane that had a similar cloaking technology. The surface of the plane was covered with display elements which could display whatever was "behind" the plan.

One intricacy in the novel (which I haven't seen addressed here) was that, because the display elements were essentially omnidirectional, the transparency effect was directed at a specified target. In other words, if the fictional plane were trying to thread its way through a formation of enemy planes, the transparency system would be directed to make the plan transparent to a particular designated enemy plane. The plane would still be mostly transparent to the other enemy planes, but the effect would break down for the display elements that were visible to both the designated plane and the other planes.

Invisibility cloak

[hutchy]

This is so old its got grey hair. I remember that the US Army has been tinkering with exactly this for years to keep their tanks out of sight. Dont know how many years ago I read it, but its been YEARS.

You can't see me!

[Proc6]

I'm invisible! What? Yes I am! Okay, move 4 feet to your right. Okay, NOW I'm invisible, right!?

the Al Qaeda sez w00t~!

[Anonymous Coward]

So when can this technology be exported to the United Arab Emirates for Osama and his travelling dog and pony show of death>>?

yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

An invisible cloak?
I'll believe it when I see it.

Don't Panic!

[Anonymous Coward]

To hell with it. I'll choose the S.E.P. field anytime.

What next

[Anonymous Coward]

A cloak of invisibility, eh?
What will they think of next?
A +5 Vorporal Sword and a Wand of Lightning?

So what about shadows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Objects have shadows, there's no way it can get rid of your shadow, so generally, a bit useless.

Prior Art - tom swift

[Anonymous Coward]

ancient.

can only work for one viewer from a single angle
and known distance.

Prior art

[Digital_Quartz]

I believe Dean Ing has prior art in his (somewhat lame) book, The Ransom of Black Stealth One.

He wrote about using photodetectors on an aircraft and a light emitting "skin" to render a plane invisible.

fault

[Anonymous Coward]

The shadow cast by the object having this 'cloak'
would also be shown by the 'cloak', so while you
won't see the object, you'll see it's shadow

when I was 6 years old...

[reverse flow reactor]

when I was 6 years old, I thought that could be done by adding a bunch of mirrors to redirect light around the person wearing the cloak. Kind of like a lot of periscopes or fibre optics. There are lots of problems with this idea, namely the bulkiness of the mirrors and such, but I was 6 when I thought of it.

I guess this is my declaration of my idea. Fee free to reference this as prior art when someone tries to patent an invisibility cloack through the use of mirrors.

If someone can patent something that I thought of when I was 6, then either (a) something is wrong with the patent office, or (b) I should be filing a lot more patents.

Objects usually cast shadows...

[Snart Barfunz]

...so the 'invisible' object would look like it's own shadow. Unless some way could be found to make light pass right through the object. Like an invisibility cloak of some kind.

Re:Objects usually cast shadows...

[adb]

The natural way to go from there, though, is a cloak that doesn't have "sides": the photoreceptors and photoemitters are mixed all over the surface. That way the light from one side would come out the other side, and there'd be no shadow. (It doesn't look like they're doing it this way yet.)

Wow. They've re-invented the digital camera.

[bons]

Photo reception on one end. Light emission on the other.

Was this not obvious to anyone a decade ago?

A few thoughts...

[Bones3D_mac]

First off, I noticed a lot of people seen this and immediately thought of a flat surface with some sort of display of the backdrop on it. Sure, the idea is cute and all, but only would work if someone was looking directly at it from a straight on view.

Now, a more realistic approach would be to a hemispherical display. Merge this with equipment similar to that used to take Quicktime VR panoramic imaged... but only setting everything at the edges of the hemisphere instead of the middle. Then, have a fast computer calculate out the correct "image" to display as a texture for the hemisphere and map it onto it. (Think IMAX, but inverted.)

Unlike a flat surface, a hemisphere would be ideal since the shape does not vary and it can be scaled as needed for the task at hand. With technologies such as OLED displays, which can be shaped to conform almost any surface, this could be a frighteningly real scenario.

A few considerations:

• The biggest concern for employing a device like this would be avoiding detection from devices that use a means other than visual to detect objects... such as radar, sonar and infra-red sensors. it should be possible to avoid detection by these, but would require extra thought being put into the design.
• Shadows will be a difficult obstacle to overcome if you are approaching at a time other than "high noon" or night. You may be able to kill a shadow by drowning it with light, but then you have the risk of the light itself being seen.

I much rather have...

[GutterBunny]

...a productivity cloak.

Imagine it. You're having a lousy day at the office. Got nothing done, but read email. Your boss comes storming in asking for a report that's 2 months overdue. You simply throw on your productivity cloak and (walla!) your screen shows a nearly completed report, while you appear confident it'll be done soon.

Re:I much rather have...

[ivrcti]

And just like this invisibility cloak, you get shot when you take it off.

Completely agree

[ergo98]

I completely agree: This is the sort of abuse of the patent system that absolutely thwarts innovation (because people who might have an actual reasonable hope of producing something like this will be put off by this onerous patent which, by its very uselessness, claims a vast realm of possible technology, yet the patenter themselves have offered absolutely nothing more than every single child has thought up at some point (I know I had this simple idea as a child, although I immediately realized that there are an infinite points of light hitting any one point by an infinite number of angles, so simply putting a composite sensor and opposing light wouldn't be sufficient).

Re:Completely agree

[Kintanon]

The idea I came up with a kid involved one way only invisibility using about 40 million of those little fiberoptic tubes you can get, and bending then around your body so that one end pointed behind you, and the other pointed in front of you. So people would just look right through you. It didn't work as a 'I'm walking through this crowd of people and they can't see me' invisibility, but it seemed like it would work great if you didn't move much (A sniper or something).

Kintanon

Money jackets

[pommiekiwifruit]

Isn't that the usual atire for the groom in a Hindu wedding? I think a white horse comes into the equation also.

Already patented

[Anonymous Coward]

US patent US5307162 among others have already been awarded to inventors.

It would be very helpful

[UberJumper]

Speaking strictly of optical camoflage... here's some of the military definitions of Why things are seen: Shape - geometric man made shapes stand out in nature. The shape of an infantryman's helmet, or the angular lines of an armoured vehicle. Shine - a surface that doesn't shine appropriately for it's surroundings... bad texture mapping :-D Sillouette - the outline of the object being seen against a skyline or a solid color background (the side of a sand dune for example) Shadow - Things that cast shadows on themselves, or cast shadows have a larger or more easily identifiable signature. Imagine a fighting trench/foxhole with overhead cover, and a firing slit in front. The shadow inside the firing trench helps make the trench visible. Spacing - regularly spaced items stand out. Posts driven every 6 feet into the ground, or a line of advancing infantry for example. Colour - Dark green camoflage against light terrain... like the Canadian Army in Afghanistan in their green battledress Movement - Moving objects draw the eye. A 'cloak suit' could help minimize or eliminate several of those factors. Color, Shape, Shine, Sillouette and Shadow to start, and would/could minimalize movement. Now, there's obvious technical limitations that have already been mentioned (battery life, electronics breakdown, etc), but this could have fantastic applications for things like Satellite observation or vehicle mounted systems. Imagine a large, easily deployed fabric cover overtop of a battalion command post that then projects a false image of what's under the cover. Great way to hide things from Satellite or high flying recon birds, and it's not limited by manportable power. Vehicle mounted systems would also be able to work without the limitation of having to carry large power supplies. As an ex-infantryman, I don't like the thought of soldiers having to hump extra kit into battle, however, if it's ruggedized, minaturized and made extremely reliable, it could be an important factor in keeping soldiers from being seen. I don't think any infantryman will discount it out of hand, but instead will only ditch the kit when it proves to be more hassle than it's worth. ps. The Reality Dysfunction (by Peter F. Hamilton) has some great examples of 'sneak suits' in action.

Re:It would be very helpful

[UberJumper]

GG Formatting... let's try that again...

Speaking strictly of optical camoflage... here's some of the military definitions of Why things are seen:

Shape - geometric man made shapes stand out in nature. The shape of an infantryman's helmet, or the angular lines of an armoured vehicle.

Shine - a surface that doesn't shine appropriately for it's surroundings... bad texture mapping :-D

Sillouette - the outline of the object being seen against a skyline or a solid color background (the side of a sand dune for example)

Shadow - Things that cast shadows on themselves, or cast shadows have a larger or more easily identifiable signature. Imagine a fighting trench/foxhole with overhead cover, and a firing slit in front. The shadow inside the firing trench helps make the trench visible.

Spacing - regularly spaced items stand out. Posts driven every 6 feet into the ground, or a line of advancing infantry for example.

Colour - Dark green camoflage against light terrain... like the Canadian Army in Afghanistan in their green battledress

Movement - Moving objects draw the eye.

A 'cloak suit' could help minimize or eliminate several of those factors. Color, Shape, Shine, Sillouette and Shadow to start, and would/could minimalize movement.

Now, there's obvious technical limitations that have already been mentioned (battery life, electronics breakdown, etc), but this could have fantastic applications for things like Satellite observation or vehicle mounted systems. Imagine a large, easily deployed fabric cover overtop of a battalion command post that then projects a false image of what's under the cover. Great way to hide things from Satellite or high flying recon birds, and it's not limited by manportable power. Vehicle mounted systems would also be able to work without the limitation of having to carry large power supplies.

As an ex-infantryman, I don't like the thought of soldiers having to hump extra kit into battle, however, if it's ruggedized, minaturized and made extremely reliable, it could be an important factor in keeping soldiers from being seen. I don't think any infantryman will discount it out of hand, but instead will only ditch the kit when it proves to be more hassle than it's worth.

ps. The Reality Dysfunction (by Peter F. Hamilton) has some great examples of 'sneak suits' in action.

mimic powerful light sources nigh-impossible

[fudgefactor7]

The article explains that the photoreceptors and emitter array would copy what's behind the wielder and blast it forward. Great, but what if the object behind you is super luminous or moving very rapidly. I doubt the photoemitters could keep up with, say, the sun. Heck, they might not even be able to render Quake 3 at a decent frame rate. Not to mention the power requirements...(read any of the the "wheelbarrel" comments made by others.) Also, this idea has been thought up before. Prior Art being a concern, I (personally) would reject his patent claim.

camera obscura

[rapiddescent]

If I was designing this, I'd use an inside out camera obscura based on two semi-circular projection screens.

this would solve the 'looking at it from an angle' problem mentioned above.

If you haven't seen a camera obscura, its victorian-era (1800's) technology that projects an image onto a concave screen in a darkened room. It just uses lenses and mirrors.

There's one at the royal observatory in Greenwich, UK (of GMT fame) and one in Edinburgh, Scotland.

rd

It's called the DMCA

[NoWhereMan]

Here's a new method. You tape a piece of paper on it that says "You can NOT SEE ME!." When someone ignores the paper, you send your lawyers to sue them.

Project Yehoudi

[Anonymous Coward]

Optical Stealth technology has been a long time coming, back in World War II our armed forces experimented with putting lights on aircraft to make them blend in. It was called project Yehoudi The results were so successful that the government classified the project back then and it hasn't been heard from since.

This invisibility cloak is probably an outgrowth of a similar project.

The Air Force would probably be the biggest user of this technology, you see the plane only from certain angles, and usually from far away. A cloaking system wouldn't have to be as precise to hide the aircraft.

We already have thermal suppression tech, radar invisibility tech, contrail suppression tech, and are working on active camoflauge. The only thing we need to do to make our planes completely invisibile is working on reducing sound signature.

Now all we need...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now all we need is warp engines and we can build a real Romulan War Bird, or a Klingon battle cruiser. Man o man if this is for real. Can you imagine how easy spying becomes. Or hiding shit from the man. You can make your drugs invisible. Can you imagine how crazy this will make those drug searching dogs. They smell it, but they cant see it!

Nothing new :)

[MrIcee]

Finally, someone did one of these. Great. I had this idea many many many years ago - though slightly different.

In my version fiber optic was carefully woven so that each strands start point was directly opposite it's exit point on all sides of the object.

The device they've generated uses a similar approach but probably works much better because instead of using a passive fiber optic system, it replicates the light. Probably much easier to build and walk in - though undoubtly hotter and power hungry.

If you think about what something like this would look like... it would resemble the alien from the movie Predator. Why? Because of refraction issues. Specifically - in the fabric you will be bringing the light that is behind you, to in front of you, while the light that is flowing around you will pass through more air. The result will be that the refractive index of the reproduced light will be missing about 5 inches of air, thus it will shimmer slightly like a heat wave.

I actually came up with 3 methods of invisibility... here they are:

1) Fiber optic suit, just described.

2) This one is great for holloween... get a tiny tiny color digital camera on a chip, a jean jacket, and a tiny LCD color TV. Put a hole through the back of the jean jacket and mount the camera inside so that it sees out the back of your jacket. Mount the LCD panel on the front of the jacket, preferable behind a similar sized hole you cut in the material so that it hides all but the LCD screen itself... turn it on, and it should look like you have a Terminator 2 style bullet hole going right through your body.

3) Drugs :) In the 60's thorough 80's wonderful experiments were done to determine how the eye sees. Our eyes see by constantly twiching very very quickly. The twitch causes the cells in our eyes to move in and out of what they are looking at. Cells that are looking at edges with contract will thus cycle in and out of contrast and trigger - so we see the edges. Researches took two approaches... first, they placed a red square on a white card and using photosensors, watched the twich of the eyes and moved the red square in sequence with the twitches. This means that the eye could not see the edges since it kept them in the same position with the twitch... the result? The red square immediatly became invisible (the user only saw white) because of over saturation of the cells and no edge visible. The second method was to induce a drug that caused the rapid movement of the eyes to be suppressed... once administered - as long as the head is still your basically blind. An interesting theory on cats (though I don't believe proven yet) is that they don't have the natural twitch and use this for hunting. Sitting very still, anything that moves is instantly very very visible while the rest is virtually invisible. Additional speculation is that purring is a natural mechanism for producing a twitch in the animal as well.

Whatever... invisibility is fun ;))

invisibility cloaking

[orrinrule]

Popular Science had an article a year or two back about stelth technology for the day light. It involved something similar where there were sensors all over the aircraft and brightness changing panels that would match the sky (or ground I suppose) behind the plane.

Tall guy sitting in front of you.....

[3seas]

Now that they have solved the tall guy sitting in front of you in the movie theater .... Now they just need to solve the jerk sitting behind you kicking your seat.

Re:Tall guy sitting in front of you.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I find that standing up and threatening to stomp the little creep works pretty well.

maybe I need to cut back on the caffeine.

Re:Tall guy sitting in front of you.....

[foolip]

But since can't possibly cover his eyes with sensors You'll still have to spots of him in the way. Just like in Quake deathmatches - must be the same technique.

Re:Tall guy sitting in front of you.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Both are quickly and cheaply solved with a Desert Eagle Action Express.

Remember: from my cold, dead hands.

old technology...

[LuxFX]

I've already got one of those on my digital camera.

It's neat, when I turn on the screen on the back, it's like the middle of the camera is invisible and I can see right through it!

Squatting patent

[Anonymous Coward]

With no actual innovation, this patent is the equivalent of registering "spaceships4sale.com" with no related business plan, hoping someone will come along with a plan and pay you for your domain.

Patent abuse at it's most glorious.

However exactly this thing WAS described ...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

In his fictional story, both methods have problems. The problems are more than fictional, since one of the methods relies on the nonsense supposition that since black is the absence of light, the only reason you can see something that's black is that the black isn't PERFECTLY black, and that if you could achieve perfect blackness you could achieve invisibility.

And the other process was to make the subject transparent. Would work if possible but also impractical.

But a "cloak" that either records the view on one side, small patch by small patch, and reconstructs it on the other side ditto, or actually pipes the light around and re-emits it, has been used repeatedly in science fiction since the Golden Age of Campbell's editorship of Astounding/Analog magazine.

I THINK some of 'em even got the need for networking each "camera" to multiple "displays", to account for the virtual passage of light through the thickness of the cloaked space, though I don't recall any of 'em explicitly mentioning the need for the network connectivity to be dynamic, to account for a flexing body.

(I'd dig through my collection to find a few samples but it would take a while. If you want to dig through yours, start with Randall Garret.)

Now if somebody has come up with a particular WAY to pipe the light or its signal around that's worthy of a patent. But if they've just patented the idea of mimicing a transparency (light emission) or do what an octopus does (variable absorbtive color cells to mimic the surface behind), it's been described repeatedly.

An aside: One of the funnier throwaways in a fantasy novel (Too Many Magicians?) was the presentation at a magician's conference of a spell for making EVERYTHING BUT THE EYES invisible. The disadvantage of the previous spells was that they made the subject blind, because the light didn't interact with his eyes. It is easier to hide a floating pair of eyes than a whole body, and easier to be unnoticed if you aren't constantly bumping into things. B-)

USAF Active Camoflauge

[Niaxato Blackstar]

Scientific American reported that the USAF was playing around with active camoflauge between two and three years ago. Apparently, there are several F-15s that have been fitted with the apparatus, and it makes them effectively invisible at about a mile away.

However, the problem is that the material used for the technique tends to reflect radar as well as aluminum coated mylar (aka chaff) and makes a real tasty target.

Shadows might be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that the setup might be suceptible to a bright light source. Shine like at the cloaked object and you would still see a projection of the shadow behind the object. I do see that they could figure this out by projecting the light through to the back wall and fading the effect. I guess it doesn't matter anyway for me, because they'll never engineer an invisibility cloak big enough for my computer fattened ass.

Easily defeated...

[DevNova]

As soon as someone wearing this walks in front of a painting or billboard or magazine rack...BAM!...you get them on copyright infrigement. No hope for you.

Perspective

[Bohnanza]

Basically what we're talking about is a flat-screen monitor that displays a picture of what's behind it, right? It seems they're ignoring perspective.

Think of the WWII Spitfire.

[Bolen]

Painted green on top, and sky blue on bottom. From the ground, the Spitfire was supposed to blend in with the sky. Viewed from above, it was supposed to blend in with the ground.

Of course, that didn't help a lot if you were flying low over water, for example.

Re:Think of the WWII Spitfire.

[buzy buzy]

Thats why they flew upside down over water. Didn't make bailing out any easier.

Re:Think of the WWII Spitfire.

[varith]

They did that for B-52's during Vietnam also. Camo on top and gray on the bottom. Nowaday they seem to be painting them Black or a very dark green. Guess thats becuase they fly them at night mostly.

Does Victor Appleton II get a cut of the royalties

[mwood]

Tom Swift Jr. did something similar for sonar decades ago.

Fictional Aircraft that did this...

[Gameface]

Seems to me there was a fictional story about an aircraft that did exactly this...
If I remember right, it was by Dean Ing, and called "The Ransom of Black Stealth One". I no longer have the book (Bookcrossing.com), but I think this is the one...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai l/-/0812 508572/qid=1031070445/sr=12-18/103-8289123-0052667 ?v=glance&s=books

This is already out.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen TV programs on this. It's called active camouflage, and is used on some US military aircraft.

Program was on the discovery channel.

An oversight of the posters

[Henry Stern]

It seems that nobody has realized that at 800m, the sniper making use of this tech will be very, very well hidden. It doesn't matter how pixelated it is, nor does it matter if there will be a sharp edge around it. By the time you get close enough to notice any of them, the sniper will have tagged you and will be on his merry way. This seems like a very practical invention and could be an invaluable tool for soldiers in the field.

Why is it suddenly the "in" thing to be so negative about every new invention? Patenting physical inventions isn't exactly a new thing.

Invisibility

[Bignuts]

Wait a minute. How the hell are they gonna be able to find the guy who violates the patent and makes a copycat device??

Shadows

[Ra5pu7in]

Unfortunately this wouldn't correct for shadows (unless perhaps there was also a top to bottom array shining light on the ground).

Heat, heat, heat

[edremy]

So do IR detection. Dumping heat has always been a big problem on spaceships (hint: space is a vacuum) If you're doing ship/ship combat you've probably got big engines, lots of computers, redundant life support and other energy generating/consuming devices. Your spectrum is going to be totally unlike a star, so even if you're end on and basically a point to the sight on the other ship, you won't be hard to find. (Hey look- what's this blackbody source without iron lines?)

In my days as a tanker, I basically stopped using optical sights altogether. Thermal imaging is so much better it's scary- you really can see in the dark, through camo, etc. Even in fog/rain it's still better than optical.

Re:Heat, heat, heat

[HiThere]

That's one reason you design the ship like a needle. This lets you radiate heat from the sides instead of directly toward the object of interest. Perhaps you could use heat pumps to concentrate the heat in places where it's emission would be blocked (in the direction of interest) by some other part of the ship.

O, yes, if we're going to get modern, then the ship should be built out of plastics and ceramics over most of it's shell, and only have metals in the places designed to be "safe" for the emission of heat. (But when the books were written, that wasn't an option.)

Re:Heat, heat, heat

[Moonshadow]

How will that work in a vaccuum? If there's no medium for the heat to travel through, will it still show up?

I'm relatively ignorant of the principles behind thermal imaging, but it seems that a lot of detection techniques used in an atmosphere would be useless in space, where there is no meduim for various energies to travel through.

Re:Heat, heat, heat

[susano_otter]

Thermal imaging relies on emissions in the Infrared band, which is a subset of the Electromagnetic Spectrum. I'm pretty sure that nothing in the EM spectrum requires a medium for propagation. After all, visible light, UV rays, X-rays, and radio waves all travel through space just fine, don't they?

Remind me again how you thought we were communicating with the various interplanetary probes we've sent out of our atmosphere.

Re:Heat, heat, heat

[Molt]

Err.. are you saying you can't detect the heat from that rather useful orb known as the Sun due to their being a vacuum between you and it?

Re:Heat, heat, heat

[ethereal]

There's always radiation itself, which requires no medium. You're thinking of convection/conduction.

Joke right?

[Anonymous Coward]

maby the later models, but not at first. The early versions had a carberator prob. that killed the engine under negitive g's (inverted, certain manuvers etc.)

time delay?

[JediCeleste]

Many have already pointed out the problems with depth perception, angle viewing and shadows. I'm wondering about lag. Seems to me that such a device would need some kind of processor to continuously keep track of every "pixel" of light behind the cloaked object, and calculate the correct light to be generated in front. When the background is moving or extremely complex, it'd really have to cook to keep up.

Which raises a slew of tertiary issues: cooling, power (see wheelbarrow remarks), and the precise materials that transmit the light. Doesn't sound like fiber optics are part of the plan. Between processing time and the minute, but still present, transmission time, this method is gonna need some work.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Lron is alive and well living in ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Monkeys Eyebrow Ky. After his reincarnation in 1987,
he chose to live with a family that shared his values of
living close to the land.
Why did Mr. Hubbard choose Monkeys Eyebrow Ky ?
Well this area will in the next few years be hit
with the biggest earthquake the world has ever known
and at that time all of scientologies teachings will come to
fruition.
You see, Monkeys Eyebrow Ky will be the place that a huge
rift will open in the space time continuum and at that time
and place Mr. Hubbard will be named ruler of the Galactic Federation.
-
I hope you all have CLEARED by then. Otherwise you will be
toast.

MHO and a related anime quote

[MoneyT]

Aren't you all so lucky, no only do you get to hear my opinion (as if you cared) bu tI get to pull out a related anime quote for extra karma points. Anyways...

While it may not be perfect now, the idea and (if it exists) the current prototype are enough to generate interest and development. To use a computer related example, when Xerox developed the GUI at PARC, it was far from perfect. If the type of cynicism with which we look at things today existed then, the GUI might never have been developed any further. But someone (notably some Apple employees) saw potential and said that it could be developed and improved. And they were right.

Now for my anime quote - from Ghost in the Shell:
"If man realizes technology is within reach he achives it, like it's damn near instictive."

Another very useful application for that

[freejamesbrown]

Another very useful application for that technology would be a way to make windows through feet of concrete or metal.... your house could have massively thick walls and you could get all kinds of light and visibility via this technology.

how about space ships with hulls several feet thick? want a window through 5 feet of steel? talk about "glass" bottom boats or wonder woman's invisible jet... you could also make cars without glass windows... (heaven forbid the sensors go dead though!!!)

and talk about tv with "real" depth!!!

very cool stuff. the list could go on and on. the applications for that tech are pretty wide and far reaching...
m.

Prior Art?

[obrseamus]

I KNOW I have seen this concept in science fictional novel, I don't know if that is enough to count as prior art though. I think it might have been a Robert Asprin book. The suit and many small cameras, and many small 'screens' and projected from one side of the suit to the other. Anyone know what i'm talking about?

umm...space blanket?

[D-Fly]

yup, a simple space blanket (you know, the little silver colored emergency blankets) makes a great thermal cloak.

1 Stops almost all radiated heat.
2 Obviously there is no convection if you are wrapped in a blanket.
3 And conduction isnt much of a factor for thermo-imaging.

Re:umm...space blanket?

[dollargonzo]

one problem: that would also cause YOU to be really hot. the idea here is to stay cool but still be thermally transparent.

had a similar idea

[shd99004]

Had a similar idea, believe it or not. I was thinking about this kind of thing when to cloak aeroplanes... just never knew how it should work. Hopefully someone figured it out now.

Punisher 2002

[Evil Adrian]

This technology was used on the H.D. Stealth Stinger bike in issue #2 of Punisher 2002... does that count as prior art?

Here is a picture...

[RedWolves2]

Here is a picture of an object that has been cloaked...








It is like it's not even there!

I am now rather pissed off

[Com2Kid]

I SOOO wish I had like written this up formally years ago.

I mean fuck, I figured out that one in like 9th grade, so freakin obvious, sure implementing it is a bitch, but, err, the concept of how to do it is simple. I mean hasn't everybody kinda thought up of this as being lik the No Duh way of becoming invisible?

Duh

[superpulpsicle]

I have been practicing to walk like James Bond and hide behind boxes like Solid Snake for years. Well, I guess there's no need to train anymore.

That's no joke

[Bolen]

They really did fly upside down over water. I had forgotten that tidbit.

But! Re:The biggest question of course...

[applejacks]

Sounds like the stealth technology from Hitchhikers Guide. Remember when they went back to earth to get the cricket bat. The ship you couldn't see looking straight at it you had to see out of the corner of your eye.

l8r

Re:But! Re:The biggest question of course...

[jx100]

Actually, I believe it was an SEP (somebody else's problem) device. It just caused you to not pay attention to the device without having to cloak it physically.

As predicted on /.!

[RobertFisher]

Interestingly enough, I predicted essentially this same technique during an earlier discussion on the nanotechnology nanotechnology defense initiative at MIT.

A key example of how life imitates /. ;-)

Bob

Here ya go...

[Jeffv323]

Invisible Cloak

Re:Here ya go...

[jibs]

Could you put up another in portrait shape so that the bottom of the cloak isn't cut off? I like the collar/lapels, but I want to see how long it is... thanks. :)

-----
'Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.'
'All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary...'
- George Orwell
http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/19 84/
http://www.buzzflash.net/

laser or spot light

[neoThoth]

That's something I thought about when I was around 15 or so. I was going to use VIOS (video input output system) to create a material that reads the surrounding area and recreate what an observer should see. Then I read a Gibson book (maybe it was sterling) where a vehicle used the same concept to camoflauge itself from aerial surveilence. My kicker was what happens when someone shines a spot light ON the object or points a laser. Will the system be able to 'forecast' where the light would end up and or shine it back in the even of a laser?? This idea (if patented) will make me puke on the current USPTO system. That or start filing a bunch of patents myself for photon torpedo's, neural network interference devices and anything else I've read in SF novels.

What about glassfiber?

[cafeteria]

I feel more for the glassfiber suit which "bends" light waves around you.

Prior Art

[Feezle]

Adaptive Camouflage

The Last Crusade...

[Jhan]

Long confusing post. I guess the gist was:

The proposed system would look like "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" (the part about the "Leap of Faith"). To be truly convincing (Predator) you would have to record the angle of incoming photons, then reemit them in the appropriate place, at the appropriate angle.

Maybe it would be easier to just wear an immense cocoon of thin strands of fibre glass, arranged so that every strand starts and stop at 180 degree opposed to each other... Nah.

And, depth perception based upon focal distance could reveal a system such as this even when done perfectly. Only I don't believe that. Focal depth is the weakest of all depth cues. If you get the others (bifocal images, parallax) right noone will notice...

I had one of those in school..

[Havokmon]

Ok, so it was really a big plaid towel.. But when worn around the neck (quite like a cape), I was able to duck into a garage, squat among 'stuff', and throw the 'cape' over my head.

I completely foiled my pursuer. (Who obviously was an idiot, but I digress.)

Invisibility cloak

[Peterius]

This is pretty obvious. Why haven't they done this before. I thought there was some logistical problem. If they can do this, then it seems that they should also be able to make a cloak out of a patchwork of cells, each containing a light emitter and a light detector. Then each of these cells would be wired(like a circuit board) to the cell directly opposite it. And, the "thermoptic camo" would probably have to be skin tight. If it wasn't then often the material would flex in unexpected ways causing the cells to mismatch. My original thought was that there is no technology to minaturize the cells to the point where it would actually look like like the object behind the cloak however, since they can't do a one way, front-to-back thing, they should be able to do the whole thing. One other thing. The suit would have to be not only custom tailored for the individual but custom built. I'm not re how that would work. To actually make sure that the cell on the top of the persons shoulder is linked to the one at the bottom of their feet.

Easily solved!

[Anonymous Coward]

Detect external temperature and use peltier transformers to regulate external cloak tempature. Only difficulty would be that it'd get freaky hot inside...

this was invented over 50 years ago..

[Zurgutt]

.. and is called "television".

And it can be duplicated in virtually every home nowdays - just place a video camera behind your TV set and adjust it according your viewing angle.. and WOW, your TV is invisible now!

You've all seen...

[Anonymous Coward]

Predator... it would look like that

Who needs invisibility? qjkx

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop thinking about the future. Technology will never change. Just keep watching college football. There are no jobs in technology, or in making these "invisiblity cloaks". OP.

well

[WhiteKnight07]

I suppose they won't have pictures posted on their web site now will they?

Football games or movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that tall person in the row in front of you at the game or the movie won't stop you from seeing the event!

I invented this too

[glyph42]

I invented this too in a frigging SlashDot post, of all things! Look, it's right here:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=29464&cid=31 66 865

(note you have to remove the space near the end that SlashDot inserted)

Jeeze. If this gets a patent, I'm going to be sick.

- GLYPH

Can't imaging this working very well...

[El]

To be truly effective, wouldn't all the emitters have to be pointed directly at the observer, and all the detectors pointed exactly in the opposite direction? I don't think "cloak" is the right word for this; it obviously needs to be fixed, not flexible. Also, isn't there a lot of "prior art" on this in old SciFi stories?

Heh, muggles...

[wbattestilli]

first those big, loud, funny looking, metal broomsticks and now this.

Re:Practicality? Comoflage

[susano_otter]

FWIW, The Bourne Identity (the book, not the movie), was 90% about exactly this kind of social engineering. The rest was mostly love story, mixed with occasional gunplay.

The IR thing...

[MQBS]

The problem of infrared radiation showing the person's position isn't really as big an issues as stated. A good photodetector can be made into an IR photodetector without too much work. Ditto for the displays.

Sure it would throw out extra heat, but it would also mimic the heat signature of the objects behind you. And anyway, infrared CAN be cloaked against... or else stealth bombers wouldn't be NEARLY as useful.

I suspect early models of this sort of technology will be like a real chameleon- sit still and you blend, move and your body adjusts slowly. But then again, Real Chameleons can't just run in front of a painting and suddenly have the Mona Lisa on their backs...

(oh, and the Chameleon Cloak in GURPS is way closer than the Invisibility Cloak in AD&D! Nyah ^_^ \/)

What if...

[NoseBag]

What if there are TWO observers?

Patent Application Text

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the Application.

my outstanding patent

[iamafreeman]

a procedure for the fufillment of happiness amoung a group emptying of barrels causing vertical urination in a place for the producution of fermented beverages
Details
people get drunk

can I patent that please.

really a patent that uses the way a schoolboy would dream up after think about the problem for 2 minutes during a physics lesson

when my feet get hot I take my socks off, can I patent that?

when I need a piss I undo my zip, can I patent that?

So who's the bone head...

[Cerberus7]

...that moderated this up. I may be in the extreme minority, here, but I'm reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time and have not finished yet. Now I know what's going to happen at Mount Doom; the single most anticipated moment of the entire story. Thanks for nothing. Jerks.

Re:So who's the bone head...

[smead]

who said this had anything to do with the lord of the rings. i could be talking about some other evil, controlling, hard to resist invisibility causing item. besides it's not like you didn't know he'd edventually finish the task, the genious in the book is the path to the end, not the end itself. -smead

Stopping IR with fabric

[ghutchis]

Actually, this is what that "soldier nanotechnology" proposal is about.

Thermoelectric materials can either:
a) Use a temperature gradient to generate electricity
b) Use electricity to create a temperature gradient

Most of these /. users probably already know about thermoelectric coolers. You can use them on your massivly-overheated overclocked CPU.

But you can also change heat into electricity.

So to foil heat/IR imaging, you just need thermoelectric fabrics. Then you'd charge your night-vision goggles with your body heat.

One catch... Current thermoelectrics are very brittle ceramics. It's hard enough to make plates of them, much less flexible fabrics.

So we'll see if it works. But it's definitely something the US Army is interested in.

-Geoff

the problem

[AA0]

The biggest giveaway with the new invisible cloaks it most people do not ignore the powercord leading to no where. Microsoft has fortunately fixed this issue by forcing you to agree to disregard the powercord, in their new licensing.

Mimicing

[Anonymous Coward]

What if this technology, which partly includes the ability to transmit exact photons of light, as they would apear behind it, what if it was applied in a one-way sort of fashion, as in, it projects a static image (be whatever it may) and is viewable from a minimum of 180 degrees. Then, it would be possible to holographically mimic a wall, for example. Where as before, we have only had the ability to do one-way mirrors, now we could do one-way walls. Walls that could apear to even have objects upon them. Or recesses back into them. Since, this technology suposedly can generate photons like that. Then only work on a way to get photons from the 'room' back through it, to an observer, and viola... a cloaked observation area able to look in on a room through a one-way wall... create a small hole of this stuff, and put a camrea behind it, in some corner of the wall where no one will touch... and you get a perfectly hidden security camera... The implications are obvious.

-Microft

Not Patentable -straight from a book

[fuzzy1]

This is straight from a book by ??
Dale Brown ?? about a quiet spy
plane -

That is what kept water beds from being
patented - the description let anyone with
the correct material duplicate it.
( Stranger in a strange Land )

This looks like a similar situation - the description in the book allows anyone with
the materials to reproduce the cloaking system.

Here's a picture

[azookeeper]

of this thing. Man you can barely see it
href=http://www.environmental.usace.army.mil/ima ge s/trees.jpg

Man patents way to circumvent lack of super power

[rhettibus]

This is the old Susan Reed (a.k.a. The Invisible Woman) ploy, though she pulled her shit off a bit differently. Lacking psychic abilities derived from cosmic rays or that Hyperspace thingy, this may be the joint for some people... ahem.

mimicing light trajectory

[cosyne]

from the article
The light emitters on the front surface then generate light beams that exactly mimic the same measured intensity, color and trajectory.

So, the difference between this and what most people here seem to be talking about is that the light beams would come out in the right direction, meaning that you don't have to look at it straight on. You still might have perspective problems if you get close, but those will fade with distance.
Now, if he can develop technology to detect, process, and appropriately reconstruct all the rays which would pass through an object were it invisible (basically a badass image based rendering system and really really bad ass display) then he probably deserves a pattent.

A point on detection technology, though: if this is designed to hide from humans, it will only produce output colors from mixes of red, green, and blue. If you make a camera which sees in more colors (prev discussion on IR), it could detect the cloak. The cloak's emitters must be as advanced as the sensors it wants to avoid.

No one mentioned obvious usage like...

[aralin]

• See through houses
• Invisible protective wall above trenches
• Front panels covering heavy machinery
• Protection of historical centers of old cities from new age architecture uglyness.

3D cloaking?

[davo_1]

First of all - you would need to block all the energy you (your vessel) was emitting, then you might consider projecting what is 'behind' you.

Ok quick now - what is behind you, now don't turn around or your behind becomes your front.

Now don't look down or your top becomes...

hoo hah.

Wouldn't that only be in 2-D???

[UnphaZeD]

If you were walking around with this thing on (however big it might be) wouldn't it look like it was in 2-D and people would be able to see that something is going on? Seems to me that it would work better for objects that are standing still, not moving around.. That is an upgrade that is going to triple the cost I'm sure, and Microsoft is going ot have one that also plays MP3's. And to alla a good Knight (Klang!)

Soon coming to an evil army near you...

[barcarolle]

Look for the evil Bushist horde to nationalize this technology ASAP for use in the war on humankind.

I am very angry

[akandels]

Ever had a really great idea, and told everyone you know, only to see it appear on ./ later. Grrrr!

Re:Practicality? Comoflage

[shyster]

So in fact you would be better off being in plain sight, looking like someone/thing normal and harmless.Since that can be done very cheaply and without fancy technology, I think it will remain the preferred method of infiltration.

Unfortunately, tanks and B2 bombers really have trouble looking like "something normal and harmless". For that matter, so do platoons of soldiers with M-16s.

Sure, it's a bad patent - but how will they sue?

[Hentai]

Judge: "So, this man invented a..." (checks notes) "...'chameleon suit' in violation of your patents, and now you're suing him?"

Lawyer: "Your honor, my client has suffered greivous financial loss due to this man, right over - er... damn."

Re:Practicality? Comoflage

[Peter Harris]

Unfortunately, tanks and B2 bombers really have trouble looking like "something normal and harmless". For that matter, so do platoons of soldiers with M-16s

Unfortunately for whom? What you say is right, but I was only discussing infiltration.

Anyway, tanks and bombers are last century's way of getting what you want. Some dickheads haven't realised that yet *cough*dubya*cough*.

See-through

[kistel]

This reminds me of when i was young: I used to sit on the back seat in my father's car and I always hated that I cannot see the traffic in front of the car. I came up with an idea: put a camera above the headrest and show the image on a flat screen behind it (in front of me) real time. This way I could've see throught the seat (and anybody sitting in it).

Wasn't implemented though.

Bush League

[Wild Ennui]

What's new about this? Hasn't Cheney been wearing the invisibility device for the past 6 months? You see him a little more these days so maybe Rumsfeld took the cloaker back to put it on Powell. Colin is uttering intelligent thoughts so it's time for him to disappear.

Everyone thinks of this

[Anonymous Coward]

..and the patent app is apparently just someone who decided to write up the notion everyone thought of in the 1st 5 minutes of considering the problem. If there is nothing more toward actual implementation, this is pure intellectual land-grab and NOTHING more. This guy must have decided it was worth the $370 fee to send in the application on the off chance someone else will figure how it might really be done, and have a "prior claim". But this is not a step toward reality for the idea.
I wonder what will be next? Someone applying for a patent on a time machine? Or maybe on using Buckyballs for a lubricant (was in a SF story a number of years ago, before Buckyballs got discovered, and even named them and gave the structure. They were on some distant planet and formed quicksand-like dangerous areas...)

but...you still project shadows.

[Anonymous Coward]

This stuff doesn fix the problem of your own shadow. wether the shadow is in the front or back side, it will be visible.
And a more practical question: where to put the front and where the back ? If the back is on your back, then someone can see your back. If the back is on your front, then you have to turn your back to the observer and your don t see him anymore. Can t see if you were spotted or not...pretty anguishing...you ll be detected from the smell of fear sweat in the end...

Paint yourself in starlight

[Anonymous Coward]

You know. that junk the british barber turned inventor came up with. they use it in the space shuttle. a little dab of it on an egg will protect the egg from the heat of a blow torch.

Non military use.

[jdkane]

After discussing this article with a friend, he suggested: it would be nice to see a city skyline (cloak the buildings that impede the view).

That seems a very useful and non-violent use of the technology. I thought it was a great idea.