Cloak of Invisibility coming soon to a store near you!

[Mark]

Originally from the article
Another use could be in aviation where pilots could make cockpit floors transparent.

That would be disconcerting, to say the least!

Incidentally, I am developing a system whereby through rigorous and purposeful believe in a dogma, I see only what I wish to see in any situation. I beieve it will someday be the way we all live, but then again, I would.

 

[kenjib]

According to the written info, they are merely projecting a still photograph of the static background taken earlier onto the object. Sounds like something you could almost just replicate with an overhead projector to me, which makes it just a camera trick and not really any new technology. Perhaps I am not understanding correctly though...

 

[Doppleganger]

There's no projected image to other bystanders, only the person in the headgear sees through the object. Also notice that in the "ball & block" video, the man's hands are not invisible, only the chosen object.

 

[s/LaSH]

One key thing about this form of cloak is that you need a special surface to make it work, a surface that reflects the light from the projector (but nothing else does). That in itself has some interesting applications (which I'm sure have already been done, I just haven't read about them). Frex, invisible security tags... shine a special torch on 'em and they show up bright.

Anyway, it's an interesting piece of tech, and in its niche (namely a specially prepared environment with projectors and pickups and limited angles of approach), it could be very useful. Probably only for assassinations and other covert ops, but useful nonetheless.

I know someone in California was making a mech walker a couple of years ago, but I've forgotten the link... why have I heard nothing from Japan on the subject?

 

[The Dragon]

Do a search for "DARPA" and "exoskeleton".

They aren't getting very far, but at least they are trying. Cool stuff.

 

[s/LaSH]

Ooh, I've heard of that... but it's not quite what I'm after. Having Googled around, I found the one I remembered: http://www.mechaps.com is where it's at.

Check it out... they've been going for several years, and have their own DARPA grant. And you've got to admit, full-scale mecha are cool.

But hey, power armour is cool too. Now just imagine invisible mecha and powered armour going into battle...

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

We had a little experiment a few years back that achieved limited thermal invisibility ...

We have these heat reflective panels we put on the sides of our tanks that are used for friend-or-foe identification. They're angles, so they reflect the heat of the sky back to the observer, causing a cool spot to show up on a hot background.

Well, some genius decided to turn the panels upside down, and run them the full length of the vehicle. The panels then reflected the ground temperature, and under thermal sights the parts of the vehicle covered by the panels vanished into the ground clutter.

It wasn't practical enough for real application, but it was interesting, and worked better than another experiment, the Chia-tank, but that's another story ...