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Invisible Cloaks, Translucent Walls
jd writes "The University of Tokyo has developed the illusion of invisibility, under the name of 'Optical Camouflage.' The system is remarkably simple - you have a mix of light-sensitive and light-emitting devices attached to an adapted reflective surface. The devices are hooked to a computer, which simply projects on each side whatever is on the opposite side. The result is more of a translucent look, than real invisibility, but the potential is there. The inventer's next objective is to make walls that are invisible, using the same technology. Project a real outside image onto an interior wall without windows. This almost sounds more frightening than the cloak, since there's no reason why the sensors would have to be placed outside. Imagine a world where PHBs can turn their office wall into a window onto any cube. Zero privacy. The technology is great, but the potential for abuse is definitely there." Update: 06/15 00:20 GMT by T : You may remember we mentioned this project when it was cloak-only.
While the potential for having windows viewing into cubes is there, it seems like security cameras already do this.
No, I think the positives for this could far outway the negatives. Just think about how great it would be to have a window view of the outside world, even though you're in the middle of the building... sure, it's something that could be done with a monitor, but this sounds like it would give it a more real effect...
... cost however would probably keep this from changing anything.
WANNAWIKI Wannawiki WannaWiki WANNAWIKI!
Imagine a world where PHBs can turn their office wall into a window onto any cube. Zero privacy. The technology is great, but the potential for abuse is definitely there."
This technology opens us up to all sorts of new privacy abuses--oh, wait, no it doesn't. We've had cameras for years. It's the display that's new.
Wow, my last two posts have been bitter. I suppose Slashdot has finally rubbed off on me.
I don't think soldiers will be wearing this technology any time soon. It requires an image to be project on the material. Doesn't seem practicle for a soldier running throught the forest. Now if you wanted to hide a stationary vehicle or plane this could be the ticket.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
... unless you looked at it from different angle.
This must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
pretty right. ordinary camoflauge is enough for a solider running through the woods. as it is damn near imposibble to track someone in all camo darting through heavy woods. If you are standing still, natural camo is probably better at this point, and gives you more protection if the do find out where you are(ie behind a rock, with bush on you)
Now a tank on the other hand, its gonna be seen regardless how well camo painted it is. This might work nice, along with a good muffler.
See thru walls? Wow, oh wait, thats what windows are...
Then again, Microsoft has the trademark on those.
There is one obvious problem with the "invisibility cloak" that nobody has mentioned. In fact, the demonstrations of the device take advantage of the flaw and use it to make the device look like it will work.
The problem is, this device will make you "invisible" only to ONE PERSON. Or more correctly, the image projected on the cloak will only work for one point of view. So when the device is demoed to a camera, the camera is placed at the spot where the illusion works. If you place another camera 10 feet to the left, it would show that the image doesn't match the background, so the illusion of "invisibility" doesn't work. It's a parallax thing.
So everyone just knock of the stupid theorizing about how this is going to be battlefield camoflauge, it just isn't going to happen. It might be useful for limited circumstances, for a single viewer, for example, a surgeon might be able to see a computer-graphic overlay of the surgical operating field right through his hands. But it's not going to be a magic invisibility cloak.
this shouldn't have ever been mentioned in the first place. It's nowhere near usable no matter how much they develop it. there will always be other lights that ruin the image and the only practical uses (like the ones they mention: seeing an aircraft runway) can be accomplished using a normal camera and a normal monitor... Which is all this is! (with the exception of these "wonder beads" and a projector instead of a monitor). This is the type of stuff most of us nerds think up when we're 5 years old but we soon realize that it's not feasable and not practical and not useful unless you get billions of these beads and can project the light to them from WITHIN your "cloak" and if each bead can display at least a few hundred thousand angles (like a hologram, but thousands of times better).
Then there's the refresh rate problem... it would have to be pretty dang fast.
Then there's the texture problem... if you want to get the proper texture of your surroundings, you'd need billions of beads, each with their own light source, along with millions of cameras.
The point of camouflage isn't to make someone (or something) invisible. Its there to break the outline of the object so its difficult to tell what the object is, how far away, which direction they're going.
This might not work at night against an army equipped with IR sensors, but in the daylight, on a hill, in a jungle or anywhere else you dont want your outline visible this will be effective.
If it can be used to cloak ships, aircraft, etc. it will be a boon. Sure you can still be detected, but the element of suprise is what counts. A few extra seconds is all that counts. Someone not believing what their sensors are telling them beacuse they can't see whats coming at them.
Also, in aricraft if you can hide the cockpit your pilots will have a huge advantage over adversaries. In fighter combat, the whole point is to keep your lift vector on your oponent. If he does something unpredicatble and goes beneath your aircraft your dead. If you can't see your oponent your dead. If you can see him no matter where he his in a 360 sphere you've just won.
Its not totally comparable, but try flying IL2 (or any other air combat sim) with cockpits on vs someone that has them turned off. Its a totally different experience.
At least for real 'invisibility'. I saw it in person at NextFest in San Francisco. It's a neat gimmick, but you're only *invisible* if your enemy is carrying a video projector and a video camera and projecting camouflage onto you. On the other hand you could watch TV on J.Lo's butt. Now that's useful.
This almost sounds more frightening than the cloak, since there's no reason why the sensors would have to be placed outside. Imagine a world where PHBs can turn their office wall into a window onto any cube. Zero privacy.
How would this be any different than using video cameras, privacy wise? and we've had those for years.
The problem with the above plan is that you're limited to clear materials when you're building the wall. The translucent wall tech described in the article could be applied to a wall of any thickness and made of any material- even a load-bearing brick or concrete wall.
Of course, you caould always just use Tansparent concrete, but that's still a ways off.
I hope that's not your only trick
What about an ordinary soldier running through an 'urban' jungle? Say downtown Los Angeles? In broad daylight, something like this might provide an 'edge' for the average foot soldier.
More and more, we're seeing urban combat (a la Iraq).
almost sounds more frightening than the cloak, since there's no reason why the sensors would have to be placed outside.
Everyone is talking like he's got some brand new technology here or something.
It's just a camera and a video projector. With a cloak or wall made out of some highly reflective material. That's it. You have to setup the camera ahead of time, and setup the video projector ahead of time. You have to have power to run it all. You have to stand in exactly the right spot, and it only works as an invisibility cloak if the other guy is standing near line of sight with the projector. Which is itself obviously pretty visible.
Before this guy put all this stuff together, bosses were putting cameras in the workplace. This "innovation" (and believe me I use the term loosely) doesn't really add anything to that equation.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
Video cameras - fucking video cameras we've had for decades - have the same "potential for abuse," the same ability to usher in a new zero-privacy, post-apocalyptic distopian future.
Every new technology of any substance whatsoever has the "potential" for some kind of abuse, guess we'll have to live in fear for the rest of our lives.
sic transit gloria mundi
Once again Mil Procurement fucks it up. Just read the cnn article. VELCRO fucking pockets!! I'm ex military (australia) and the last thing you want or need is velcro on your uniform. Waiting quietly in an ambush, just need to carefully and slowly remove a pen from my pocket RRRRIIIIPPPPPPPPP - you're dead... Perhaps its not such a problem for US forces, with all that technology maybe there's no need for Fieldcraft anymore - but I doubt it...
Who's with me?! I SAID... WHO'S WITH ME!!??
That technology is 1000's of years old - various fish do exactly the same thing!
If it's not 3D, and does not shift the view with the movements of the viewer, it doesn't work.
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Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
...as it is damn near imposibble to track someone in all camo darting through heavy woods If your enemy has thermal imaging you might as well have no camo.... However, there are already fabrics out there that can shield a persons' body heat enough so they won't or only barely show up on thermal imaging equipment...
One possible flaw:
Whenever the molecule is hit by a neutrino, it performs the reverse.
We're using neutrinos! They go through EVERYTHING!
but that's a really good idea... i had never thought of that.
The first is, obviously, the fact there are no 'types' of neutrinos. You can't have colors. Not to mention that light doesn't really work that way...you'd need to convert from the full spectrum to RGB, which means you'd need two or even three neutrinos for each photon.
However, we can pretend neutrinos have undiscovered 'frequencies' and ignore all that.
You also have the issue that you need to remove all neutrinos that already are passing though someone so the other side doesn't show random static. That's doable if you're managed to get this far handing neutrinos, but this leads to the large disadvantage that any idiot could see you with neutrino glasses, because you'd be blocking them out.
However, all this is moot because is the insurmountable physic problem that neutrinos are fermions (basically, they're electrons without a charge) and photons are bosons, and there's no way to for them to turn into each other.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Although note that while we have these magical neutrino detectors, that still doesn't mean they're going to be casting a shadow on the ground, because neutrinos don't bounch off anything, and hence it would be hard to see someone is blocking neutrinos unless they're directly in the way.
But I'm fairly certain they're common enough, (Pretending, of course, we had a way of detecting them, which is required for this to work.), for someone to notice that they are missing from a certain point. And it's even worse than wearing glasses...unlike infrared or motion detectors, if there are neutrinos missing it pretty much is required to be a human doing it. Just hook up autotargeted guns to the sensors and blow them away.
Of course, the gag here is that our neutrino detectors would also be blocking neutrinos...
However, this idea works perfectly if you ditch the neurinos and use, say, UHF. Just shift the wavelengths of light up, and back down. Sure, we don't have any known way of doing that right now perfectly, but it's more plausible than inventing a neutrino converter. And it seems, at least to me, at least slightly more plausible than bending light around something. And you can fix the 'blind spot' problem by just broadcasting static from random points and building waveform guides on equipment to delibrately screw with tracking that specific radio frequencies.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?