Optical Camouflage
Entry posted by proto-warrior
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This is one of my favorite things I've seen on the Net.
Taken from Wikipedia:
Optical camouflage is a kind of active camouflage which completely envelops the wearer and displays an image of the scene on the opposite side of the viewer projected onto it, so that the viewer can "see through" the wearer, rendering the wearer invisible. The idea appears in many fictional works, such as the William Gibson novel Neuromancer, where it is referred to as a "polychromatic suit." Also referred to as "thermoptic camouflage" or simply "thermoptics," this technology was popularized by the sci-fi manga (and later anime) Ghost in the Shell. It has also been featured in the 2000 game Deus Ex, the 2002 James Bond movie Die Another Day, as well as a similar technology appearing in the Metal Gear Solid video game series, the Halo video game series, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, and the video game Phantom Crash.
Outside of fiction, the concept exists for now only in theory and in proof-of-concept prototypes, although many experts consider it technically feasible. In 2003, three professors at University of Tokyo — Susumu Tachi, Masahiko Inami and Naoki Kawakami — created a prototypical camouflage system in which a video camera takes a shot of the background and displays it on the cloth using an external projector. The same year Time magazine named it the coolest invention of 2003. With the advent of flexible electronics such as a flexible liquid crystal display, that would allow the background image to be displayed on the material itself, it is believed that this form of optical camouflage would closely resemble its fictional counterparts.
Although this isn't all that cutting edge (the prototype was made in 2003), I still can't get over how freakishly cool this technology is. Despite not being all that complex of an idea, it obviously has an incredible allure to it.
The full collection of videos can be found here.
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