Special Camo that changes with its surroundings

I've seen it briefly on TV. Its a black suit that changed automatically with its surroundings. They didnt show it change, due to the fact that they wanted to keep it top secret, but they showed a 3D model of it changing. Any info on it would be nicce

TarKuS412, This sounds interesting.

I did a google search for "chameleon chamouflage" and "stealth camouflage" but came up with nothing pertinent.

Do you remember what TV Station or Network broadcast it?

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. [1] 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.

See optical camoflage.

en.wikipedia.org...

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[edit on 7/12/2006 by 12m8keall2c]

Originally posted by Mechanic 32
TarKuS412, This sounds interesting.

I did a google search for "chameleon chamouflage" and "stealth camouflage" but came up with nothing pertinent.

Do you remember what TV Station or Network broadcast it?

Yea, it was on a show called Modern Marvels. It looked pretty sick

The British army have been doing this neat trick for years now, what you do is this, when you move from a forest environment into an urban one, remove the twigs and ferns from your helmet!

CX.

I thought after my weak attempt at humour above i'd better redeem myself somewhat, heres an interesting article that talks about this kind of thing, but which also repairs itself too.

Self healing camo coating

Is that the kind of thing you were on about?

CX.

Some more links to this kind of thing, not too much for personal clothing cam though but it look like they are hoping this can be adapted for the soldiers clothing.

Active camo

Stealth Technology System

Defence review on STS

CX.

I saw something like this in a zoo magazine a while ago. It is a shirt which i think projects then image behind the shirt but it wasnt like a shirt that makes you invisible, you could still tell the guy was wearing a shirt and everything.

it was pretty cool though

idk, it was like a normal suit and everything, but it was all black, like i said, they never showed how it worked but they claim that it just knows what the surrounding is.

moving from the "project image from camera on to shirt" concept, which will work as true invisibility camouflage only from one direction (behind the camera) and with no depth perception (ie it will look 3d with one eye closed ony and the focal point will be different to that of the background) to a proper invisibility suit based on this technique requires two things:

1) small very low visibility cameras facing in many directions (this seems very feasable Ive seen publicliy available cameras that are TINY, who knows what the black ops have access to). These capture the background image in all directions around the object. Actually theoretically you really want to capture the background image in all outward directions from all points on the surface of the object, but I think this is probably not necessary to get a convincing invisibility effect. What you gain form these and some (probably very computationally intensive) computer processing is the colour and brightness of light that needs to be "projected" in all outward directions from all points on the surface of the object. IE:

pick a point on a spherical object. if you look at that point straight on, it should project the light intensity and colour that a camera on the opposite side of the globe sees looking straight out. however if you look at that same point from another angle, it should appear a different colour/brightness based on whatever is directly behind it on that angle. this brings us to required technology two

2) a surface "screen" technology that has "pixels" that can be a different colour depending on the angle you look at them from. This is also a requirement for flat panel true 3d screens, and there exists just such a screen www.holografika.com...

so given enough small multidirectional (ie wide angle) cameras, the right software, and a surface coating of something like the holografika display, a digitised but otherwise correct invisibility can be attained (within the contrast and colour gamut range limitations of the cameras, and, more likely, the holografika display) that even has a correct "focal point" for the background. If the cameras and screen have enough contrast/resolution/directional resolution and the camera lenses are tiny enough not to be seen it will be invisible*

so what do we have: all enabling technologies available in the public domain, and HUGE military advantage to invisibility therefore huge dollars would have been spent trying to develop it... I give it a very high probability of having been achieved.


* actually thinking about that, lensed camera lenses themselves would be like little glass beads floating in mid air, so some way to hide them is probably necessary. I think many tiny "pinhole" style cameras with the image sensor in a small half sphere shape behind the opening (therefore capturing all entering angles of light) would work better and be far less visible