Share this story!            

NASA excited by invisible coat

Kazutoshi Obana’s gray, hooded coat doesn’t just keep him dry in a downpour. It can also make him seem invisible.

On a clear day at Tokyo University, Obana stands outside and dons the coat. Viewed through a special projector lens, the people behind him appear as images in a fuzzy, greenish tint on his coat — as if he were see-through.

Now Philip Moynihan, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, says the idea has broad applications in medical surgery, construction and aviation, although it remains in an “embryonic stage.”

“This is a kind of augmented reality,” said Susumu Tachi, a Tokyo University professor of computer science and physics, during the recent demonstration of his invention.

Tachi, who is also the founding head of the Virtual Reality Society of Japan, designed the coat using microscopic reflectors that act like a movie screen. They can even reflect images when the material is wrinkled. In fact, Tachi’s “invisibility” coat is a camera trick.

A video camera behind the coat is linked to a projector, which bounces the image off the front of the coat’s reflective surface.

Because there is no time lag between what’s happening behind the wearer and the image cast on the front of the coat, the viewer has the illusion he is seeing straight through the coat. “I think it’s got tremendous potential, once it’s refined,” NASA’s Moynihan said. One of the hurdles will be to make the technology small, affordable and viewable with the naked eye, he added.

Tachi acknowledges that the technology still requires too many parts: It can’t be seen without peering through the projector lens. Also, an affordable product is years away.

Moynihan said the US military has studied similar technology as futuristic camouflage for years. In the mid-1990s, he and another scientist conceived of “adaptive camouflage” images for stealth or armored vehicles that could help them blend in with any type of surroundings.

“We wanted something that could adapt to changing light conditions because present camouflage can be spotted at certain angles and can be seen in infrared lighting,” Moynihan said. They never made a prototype and abandoned the project when their funding ran out. —CNN

Home | Infotainment

Share this story!