Japanese scientist invents invisibility cloak

[Cecil]

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_747591.html

This is awesome, but scary at the same time.

[arcticpenguin]

If I read the article correctly, the image is a fake, i.e. a demonstration of what the trechnology "should" do.

Even if it worked like they wanted, it would not make the wearer completely invisible, it would only work for one point of view, i.e. that coinciding with the camera.

[aerocontrols]

Originally posted by arcticpenguin
If I read the article correctly, the image is a fake, i.e. a demonstration of what the trechnology "should" do.

Even if it worked like they wanted, it would not make the wearer completely invisible, it would only work for one point of view, i.e. that coinciding with the camera.

The US has been working on this technology for visual stealth for airplanes and ships.

Sometimes one direction is enough.

[Goshawk]

Yah, it's not a woo woo "invisibility" thing, it's an engineering thing. Still, it's cool.

The prof's profile. He gets paid to do this. :D
http://www.star.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~tachi/profile.html

[Occasional Chemist]

Why am I not surprised that this comes from Japan? I'm reminded of the camo in Ghost in the Shell...

[mindless]

Originally posted by Occasional Chemist
Why am I not surprised that this comes from Japan? I'm reminded of the camo in Ghost in the Shell...

And before that preditor.

most recently the latest james bond movie has an invisible stealth car.

The world could get very dangerous indeed, with assasinations becoming common place.

[shemp]

Um, it's not exactly "invisible."

If I see a floating green coat coming towards me, I'm going to assume that someone is in it.

[Blue Monk]

Originally posted by shemp
Um, it's not exactly "invisible."

If I see a floating green coat coming towards me, I'm going to assume that someone is in it.

They made one that was completely invisible but someone forgot where they set it down and now they can't find it.

Yehaaw! Sometimes I just kill me!

[Occasional Chemist]

Originally posted by mindless


And before that preditor.


Predator's wasn't an article of clothing, though.

I'm of course not saying that the cloak of invisibility is original to GitS. ;)

[arcticpenguin]

The U.S. military has a similar poject involving optical fibers in clothing. This was mentioned in the January 2003 National Geographic article on high-tech fibers. Details were classified, so the writer never actually saw an example, and NG faked an image (which they acknowledged) for the article.

[Brown]

Here is a picture of the coat at Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com/) (under news slideshows):

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20030205/lthumb.1044441588.japan_optical_camouflage_tok107. jpg

The mini-story accompanying the photo is a little unclear as to whether the picture is a fake, but upon close reading, I think arcticpenguin pegged it: the photo is done with camera trickery to simulate a desired effect:This photo was taken through a viewfinder that provides a combined image of moving images taken behind Obana and him wearing a luminous jacket that makes a transparent effect.

[bignickel]

Originally posted by Occasional Chemist
Why am I not surprised that this comes from Japan? I'm reminded of the camo in Ghost in the Shell...

Have you started on Ghost in the Shell 2: ManMachine Interface?

Just read issue #1 yesterday; 'mind-blowing' is an understatement. The graphics are leap-years beyond the first one (makes the first one look like Pokemon).

Unfortunately, Masamune couldn't resist his usual tendencies re: paranormal, and threw in some crap about people refusing to investigate psychic phenomenon or such. Can't investigate something that won't make an appearance, Shirow-san...

Still: he draws the best women in manga today! ^_^

[Plutarck]

Black guy standing naked in room full of other people: "Can you see me?!"

Everyone, slowly: "...Yeeeess."

[rwald]

Actually, I think the picture is demonstrating what the technology is supposed to do. The technology is the special camera. The object isn't invisible, even from one point of view; you just look through a viewfinder which shows you the area beyond the object, so that for you it's invisible. It'll be helpful for fighter pilots and doctors, but it isn't "invisibility" by almost any definition.

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20030205/lthumb.1044441588.japan_optical_camouflage_tok107. jpg


Clearly it is simulated.

The people seen through the coat are way too small.

[The Don]

..or are they just far away ?

Father Ted : "Dougal, these cows are small, those cows are far away"

[BillyJoe]

Originally posted by rwald
Actually, I think the picture is demonstrating what the technology is supposed to do. The technology is the special camera. The object isn't invisible, even from one point of view; you just look through a viewfinder which shows you the area beyond the object, so that for you it's invisible. It'll be helpful for fighter pilots and doctors, but it isn't "invisibility" by almost any definition. Full marks to rwald for seeing through this article.

[malaka]

I also posted this in the JREF Banter section.

The pic may be bogus, but I think the technology is real. Check out: http://www.star.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/pro...EDIA/xv/oc.html

[arcticpenguin]

Originally posted by BillyJoe
Full marks to rwald for seeing through this article.
I don't think he's got it right. I think the garment, if/when it functions as intended, will display an image on its surface which is supposed to match what is behind the wearer. So its not the viewer who is looking into a special device that does it.

[Goshawk]

The people seen through the coat are way too small.
That's because they're farther away from the girl in the green coat, and you, than you think. The girl in the green coat is wearing a gadget that is filming what's behind her--namely, those three people--and displaying it on the front of her green coat. You think that they must be directly behind her, so they look too small to you, but they are actually farther down the sidewalk, walking away from her, and you.

You can't really see anything "through" the green coat, or the girl. It's an optical illusion--the gadget is showing you a movie of what's behind her on the front of her coat, like on a movie screen.

Edited to add:


And I knew I had seen a flexible display screen somewhere. Dunno if it's the same technology the Prof is using, but it's the same idea--a wearable screen.

http://www.3g.co.uk/PR/May2002/3315.htm
France Telecom R&D has designed a prototype for a flexible screen made of woven optical fibers capable of downloading and displaying static or animated graphics (such as logos, texts, patterns, scanned images etc) directly on clothes. Thanks to this innovation, clothes can now act as a graphical communication interface, displaying visual information in real time, and offering access to all telecom services (Internet, video, e-commerce, and 3G mobiles).
http://optics.org/articles/news/8/7/1/1
France Telecom debuts fiber screen
2 July 2002

Clothes that display information look set to become a reality thanks to new fiber optics from France Telecom.

High-tech clothes that display information, adverts or moving logos could soon be in the shops, thanks to research at France Telecom.

[Reginald]

I mean if I were faking it I would remove the actor and say he was still there! :D

[ImpyTimpy]

Notice that there is a car on the right hand side, just behind the 3 people in the middle of the cloak... The car is 'snipped'.
Originally posted by Whodini
http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20030205/lthumb.1044441588.japan_optical_camouflage_tok107. jpg


Clearly it is simulated.

The people seen through the coat are way too small.

[rwald]

I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that there's no "wearable screen" involved. Look at the examples they give: fighter pilots looking through their planes' floors, and doctors looking through their own hands. Do you think they plan to add wearable screens to either the planes' floors or the doctors' hands? I'm pretty sure you use a heads-up-display type device which projects an image of what's behind the object directly to your eye. Without the HUD, there's nothing unusual about the object.

[Houngan]

stop. Stop. STOP STOP STOP!!! This has to be the most incredibly misread article on the internet. At no point does it even SUGGEST that the coat will CHANGE IN ANY FASHION. This is simply a camera trick, and the article says so. Read the uses: to help surgeons see past their hands.

What they didn't say is that the surgeon has to look through a monitor. This is a camera trick, nothing more. The only technological leap is that it is semi-realtime. The girl is wearing a solid green cloak for the same reason that special effects are shot in front of a green or blue wall, so the camera can replace the images more easily. The garment is nothing more than a raincoat, just like you can buy at the dollar store.

Clothing that can display ANY image is still a ways down the road, much less something that could present realtime shots of one angle. For adapting to all possible viewing angles, you're talking processing technology many, many orders of magnitude beyond what we now possess, not to mention having no possible surface to emit the resultant images on.

Read it again, put your science hat on.

H.

[Blue Monk]

Damn!

And I already was developing a marketing strategy for Blue Monk's Invisible Panties.

Damn, I could have been rich!

[Questioninggeller]

I wonder why this is under "Science," shouldn't there be a sci-fi area for this?

[Questioninggeller]

Originally posted by Blue Monk
Damn!

And I already was developing a marketing strategy for Blue Monk's Invisible Panties.

Damn, I could have been rich!

If you do, I'd love to have see some girls model those!!!!

[davidhorman]

The girl is wearing a solid green cloak for the same reason that special effects are shot in front of a green or blue wall, so the camera can replace the images more easily.

That might be the case for the picture they've shot, as it's only an example, but in the movie examples and the diagram on the Prof's page (which I think is referenced in the other thread on this subject), the object in front of the background has to be covered in retroreflective material (a material which reflects light back in the direction it came from, no matter what angle the material is at). There is (currently) a semi-silvered mirror or something between the observer and the object - this allows the background to be projected onto the retroreflective-covered object from the side, and then the image bounces back through the mirror straight at the observer, so there doesn't seem to be a mirror involved.

Actually, the fact that the car is clipped suggests to me that it's "real", in the sense that it's a single photo. If the background was being projected live onto the girl's coat at the time of the photo, it won't match up precisely with the background unless they spent a VERY long time getting everything in exactly the right position (and the girl would have to stay very still). If the photo had been faked, they could have taken two precisely aligned photos. Of course the car could have moved...

David

[alfaniner]

I've been thinking about how to do this myself for a couple months. My first impression on seeing this picture was that it was done in the same manner as the apemen backgrounds in 2001: A Space Odyssey. A large format slide was front-projected onto a Scotchlite (R) background, and with the alignment of projector and camera, the background appears natural. It appears that the camera in this pic is above the wearers' head, then projects the picture onto the reflective coat.

I've got yards of that material and have been thinking about my own experiment. Maybe I'll have to get to that this weekend.:cool:

[malaka]

Just realized that my last link was broken. Try this one:

http://www.star.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/projects/MEDIA/xv/oc.html

[tcwolf]

Actually, it looks more like a poncho to me.

A poncho of invisibility...

[Flaherty]

My thief has had an invisibility cloak since 3rd level. He's amassed quite the fortune due to it.

[Goshawk]

Clothing that can display ANY image is still a ways down the roadUm, clothing that can display images is already here. Maybe you can't buy it at Wal-Mart just yet, but give it time. See my France Telecom links.

http://www.rd.francetelecom.fr/en/technologies/ddm200211/techfiche2.php
Communicating Clothing

Clothing, backpacks, scarves and fashion accessories can carry flexible, fiber-optics screens (www.studio-creatif.com).
Clothing, like the other objects in our environment, is a new type of interface capable of providing information in a virtual form: motifs, texts, photos and other means of expression.

Several times, France Telecom's Studio Creatif has presented an example of clothing that is capable of displaying messages at will. The display technology is based on the association of fabrics containing optical fibers and an electronic control system that controls lighting based on luminous diodes. A special abrasion process for the fibers at the surface of the fabric associated to a specific fabric weave developed by the France Telecom laboratories made it possible to create the first bitmap screen matrix on a flexible textile base.

The fabric functions like a screen on which all sorts of visual information can be downloaded through a wireless link (by using radio waves or Bluetooth technology) via the Internet from an office computer or a mobile, or even a dedicated Internet site.

A flexible remote control in the garment makes it possible to call up the visuals stored in the clothing's memory and to generate several related special effects.

Prototypes of these 'screen garments' already have the same properties as a garment made out of a standard fabric.

More generally, the garment can serve as a base for communicating objects carried on the person ('wearable'): from an intelligent sensor that will record physiological data to a device that will make it possible to see or hear (such as the screen).

[Houngan]

I'm aware that they have developed the ability to make cloth-like displays, but the big point I'm trying to make is that the nature of clothing makes it currently impossible to display an accurate image. To play a movie on a piece of cloth, you would have to dynamically change the display as the cloth folded, rustled, etc., otherwise you have something that looks like projecting a movie onto a sheet hanging from a clothesline. This is what the pictures in the above link are, simply 2d images that have no 3d component. That's what I was saying is still way, way down the road, and even further down would be the ability to do that in real time.

H.

[rwald]

After looking at the link, it does appear to be more than just a headset. However, you do need to have that mirror between you and the object, so there's still a physical lense-like component involved. And the object needs to be covered in the retroreflective material, so it isn't useful for everything. Still, though, cool technology.

[kedo1981]

Of course the pic is a optical illusion that is what it is supposed to be ( you bone heads do understand that “movies” and TV and computer displays are optical illusions right)
Sorry you won’t be able to use it to sneak into the high school girl’s locker room to whack off, oh well, maybe someday.
It’s possible uses for medical imaging alone are out of this world

[xouper]

bump

[Johnny Pneumatic]

To play a movie on a piece of cloth, you would have to dynamically change the display as the cloth folded, rustled, etc.-Houngan





No.... you'd just wear it skin tight.

[Archangel]

Originally posted by bewareofdogmas
To play a movie on a piece of cloth, you would have to dynamically change the display as the cloth folded, rustled, etc.-Houngan

No.... you'd just wear it skin tight.

Or build it on the skin of a tank or Plane, as active camoflauge(sp?) (no need to worry about wrinkling), mixed in with some stealth tech you would be pretty much invisible.

(BTW the predator cloaking was a Piece of clothing, it was the fishnet they wore over their body)

[Bottle or the Gun]

We'll have it soon. Our gov has been working on one since 'Predator' came out.

[alfaniner]

Thanks for bumping the thread, xouper. I realize I never posted the results of my experiment.

It worked. Way cool.

Now I want to try it with a video camera rather than a still, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

[ceo_esq]

Originally posted by Goshawk
Um, clothing that can display images is already here. Maybe you can't buy it at Wal-Mart just yet, but give it time. See my France Telecom links.

http://www.rd.francetelecom.fr/en/technologies/ddm200211/techfiche2.php
So France Telecom is in on the act, too? Just what the world needs - a wearable Minitel!