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Optical Invisibility Cloak A Reality
Carpet Cloaks Bring Invisibility to the Optical World – Technology Review
Now Michal Lipson and pals at Cornell University, and Xiang Zhang and buddies at UC Berkeley, say that they have both built cloaks that are essentially mirrors with a tiny bump in which an object can hide. The cloaking occurs because the mirrors look entirely flat. The bump is hidden by a pattern of tiny silicon nanopillars on the mirror surface that steers reflected light in a way that makes any bump look flat. So anything can be hidden beneath the bump without an observer realizing that it is there, like hiding a small object under a thick carpet.
One method of making something optically invisible is to bend light around the subject to be cloaked so that an observer sees only what is behind the subject, but not the subject itself. That’s basically what the Cornell and Berkeley folks did – let’s call this method natural cloaking.
According to the article, the Cornell and Berkeley groups both came up with the same cloaking solution because their respective research was based on a concept elucidated by John Pendry and his colleague at Imperial College in London. Pendry’s idea relies on a sheet of material or “carpet” that would look flat even if something was placed under it, just as the Cornell (paper) and Berkeley (paper) groups have demonstrated.
Instead of trying to bend light around a subject, what if light was simply captured on one side of a subject and displayed on the surface of the other side of the subject – no bending required? Consider this method synthetic cloaking.
Synthetic cloaking best describes “adaptive camouflage.” Some folks at Tokyo University have been working on this, as well as the rocket scientists at NASA, but with NASA’s concepts focused on space and military applications.
The synthetic invisibility cloak in the above photo relies on a camera to capture the background and requires the projection of the imagery onto a white raincoat-like wearable screen. The rapid development of flexible displays and E Ink will soon likely allow for a comfortable full display suit (PDF link). The micro-cams needed to capture the background imagery are already plentiful and relatively inexpensive. All of the elements of a self-contained “maker” synthetic optical invisibility cloak are either available off-the-shelf or soon will be, and these technologies will continue to improve.
Will the natural cloaking concept demonstrated by the folks at Cornell and Berkeley soon be practically applied or will the already existing, and tried, synthetic methods of optical cloaking advance to a state which delivers convincing, high resolution invisibility?
Will the oft heard phrase “Can you hear me now?” soon be replaced by “Can you see me now?” I bet it will.
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