Optical Camouflage

SUMMARY
 Mankind always sensed the
milestones of science as wonders.
 Designing of things and

applications that the humans may

not even dream of had become the
ultimate aim of the scientists and
researchers.
 Here , we present one of such creative
and awesome technology that emerged
as a landmark in the field of artificial
intelligence.
 Here we describes a kind of active
camouflage system named Optical
Camouflage.
 Initially, camouflage is made understood
and then the theory of optical
camouflage is developed .
 What Is Camouflage ?
 Camouflage is the method which
allows visible organism or object to
remain indiscernible from the
surrounding environment.
 Camouflage is a form of deception

 Example: Tiger's stripes and the

battledress of a modern soldier.
 Theory of Camouflage:
 MacKay's statement remains one of the
most important elements in the theory
of camouflage
 An exact match with the environment's
colors.
 Ideally, camouflage should be made to
break up and thereby conceal the
structural lines of the object which it
hides.
 The patterns often seen on
camouflage clothing, masking cloth
and vehicle paints are carefully
constructed to deceive the human eye
by breaking up the boundaries that
define sharp edges and human
silhouettes.
 Where the idea of optical
camouflage comes from ?
A meteorologist makes the mistake of
wearing a blue outfit to work one day.
When he walks in front of the blue screen
to film the weather report, his arms appear
to have vanished, leaving only a floating
pair of hands. This scenario, which you
might recognize from the 1993 comedy
"Groundhog Day," is an optical
camouflage in a nutshell.
 What is Optical Camouflage?
 Optical camouflage is a kind of active
camouflage.
 If we project background image onto the

masked object, we can observe the masked object

just as if it were virtually transparent.
 Optical camouflage would only provide

invisibility in the visible portion of the spectrum.

 Optical Camouflage uses the Retro-reflective
Projection Technology, a projection-based
augmented–reality system, composed of a
projector with a small iris and a retro
reflective screen .
 The concept of optical camouflage is
straightforward: “To create the illusion of
invisibility by covering an object with
something that projects the scene directly
behind that object”.
Example -1 of an optical
camouflage
Example -2 of an optical camouflage
 Interesting Funny Fact
 Optical
camouflage
delivers a
similar
experience to
Harry Potter s
invisibility cloak
 How does it work?
 The most intriguing prototype uses an
external camera placed behind the cloaked
object to record a scene, which it then
transmits to a computer for image processing.
 The computer feeds the image into an
external projector which projects the image
onto a person wearing a special retro
reflective coat.
 Creating complete optical camouflage across
the visible light spectrum would require a
coating or suit covered in tiny cameras and
projectors, programmed to gather visual data
from a multitude of different angles and
project the gathered images outwards in an
equally large number of different directions
to give the illusion of invisibility from all
angles
 Although the suit described above would
provide a convincing illusion to the naked eye
of a human observer
What Is An Invisibility cloak ?
 It is a garment that resembles a
hooded raincoat.
 The cloak that enables optical

camouflage to work is made from a

special material known as Retro-
reflective material.
 A retro-reflective
material is covered
with thousands and
thousands of small
beads. When light
strikes one of these
beads, the light rays
bounce back exactly
in the same direction
from which they
came.
 ADVANTAGE
 Optical Camouflage can be used on
surgical globes or equipments so they
don’t block surgeon’s view during
delicate operations.
 In aviation, cockpit floors could become
'invisible' to assist pilots during landing.
 Technical Advantages
 The need for the camouflage aspect of this
system arises out of the present state of the
art of military camouflage in the visible light
spectrum which is generally limited to
techniques involving painting, coloring,
and/or contour shaping to allow an object to
better blend in with the background; such
methods do little to conceal moving objects as
their appearance must be constantly
controlled from the viewpoint of the observer
to blend in with the changing background.
 DISADVANTAGES
• The weak point of this technique
is that the observer needs to look
through a half-mirror.
• The current system needs a half
mirror and projectors, which
were fixed on the ground
• Wrinkles in the material.
 CONCLUSION

Now all of us have had a small tour of the
interesting world of optical camouflage.
 A lot of interesting thing have been done and
already we have seen that anyone can be almost
invisible with this technology.
 But the future promises us a lot more.
 Research work is going on and soon we will have
even more astonishing results.
 References
If you want to know the mechanism of this optical
camouflage demonstration, please see the following :
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaking_devi

ce
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_camou
flage
 http://objsam.wordpress.com/2008/01/30
/japanese-invisible-technology-
optical camouflage