Japanese Scientist Demonstrates ElectroOptical Camouflage ‘Invisibility Cloak’

It’s 100% cool. You gotta see it to believe it, and yes, there’s already the inevitable Harry Potter references. Japanese scientist Professor Susumu Tachi has developed a coat in his Tokyo University lab which appears to make the wearer invisible. Basically, a photograph is taken through a viewfinder that images a combination of moving images behind the wearer and projects them onto the from of the cloak to give a transparent effect. The illusion, part of a demonstration of optical camouflage technology at Tokyo University, is still in the early stages of research that Tachi hopes will eventually make camouflaged objects virtually transparent. Tachi hopes the technology will be useful for surgeons frustrated their own hands and surgical tools can block their view of operations and pilots who wish cockpit floors were transparent for landings. The cloak is an extension of Tachi’s previous work on “telexistance” called Twister II” as part of a ongoing robust Japanese efforts in virtual reality. Similar work is going on in America, too, such as Project Chameleo, also known as US Patent No. 5,307,162 issued 26 April 1994, “Cloaking Using Electro-Optical Camouflage”.