An article about Professor Masahiko Inami of the University of Tokyo’s Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology achieving an ‘optical camouflage’ that makes objects appear transparent became a hot topic on 5ch’s Science News+ board. The article explains that Professor Inami loved Doraemon as a child, and his research grew out of that childhood fascination. While many thread commenters immediately thought of the technology from ‘Ghost in the Shell,’ the real surprise that drew reactions was that the actual inspiration was Doraemon. The thread also discussed the technology’s practical limitations — for now it can only be viewed through a monitor — as well as comparisons with past optical camouflage research.
What Started as a Sideshow Became the ‘World’s Greatest Invention’… University of Tokyo Professor Achieves Vanishing ‘Optical Camouflage,’ Inspired by ‘Reading This Manga’ — The Foresight of the Sci-Fi Manga Ghost in the Shell (Part 1)
As a child, Professor Masahiko Inami of the University of Tokyo’s Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology loved Doraemon.
“If I have descendants in the future, surely they’ll come back in a time machine to help me when I’m in trouble.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
I saw something like this about four years ago on Telegram, posted as foreign military equipment.
something like optical camouflage
got high praise from TIME back in 2003,
and yet it's still only viewable through a monitor to this day.
So doesn't that mean practical use is basically hopeless…?
and make you unable to see it!
You stole my eyes!
You peace-drunk Japanese will probably just get exploited and that'll be the end of it lol
All they did was line up TV panels between the windshield and the dashboard and play video on them.
Can you even call this science?
The whole point of front-projection compositing is to keep the projected image from being visible on the actor, so it's actually the exact opposite of what's in Re: #1.
The idea was that magnetic ink would instantly repaint panels around the tank with an image matching the background, making it 'disappear.'
But it stopped working the moment a panel took a hit and got damaged, and no matter how good the visible-light camouflage was, it'd still show up under infrared — so it never got past the proposal stage.
True — even if it's undetectable in visible light, it's completely exposed under an infrared scope.
So optical camouflage itself ends up pointless, huh.
Privacy glass that keeps people from peeking into the bath has been around forever.
I don't have kids, so it's already confirmed I won't have any descendants in the future.
Hmm.
You'd need a forest or a big wall behind you as the background.
A technology that pointless has no future, no matter how far you push it in this direction.
but it looks like an invention that could slot right into the cultural system!
Never mind the lighthouse-brained folks —
art students will probably dream up some fun uses for it.
Let's add an infrared camouflage function too.
https://youtu.be/zZQJ0MKZNPU?si=75MkzE7v3QO4zyh0
https://youtube.com/shorts/gYkR-ge9rIs?si=-i-3dOFjc2N6EGJM
that it'll appear transparent when observed from far away at low resolution.
Though once you weigh the cost against the practicality and the actual effect, nobody's actually going to bother doing it.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
The ‘optical camouflage’ introduced in the thread is a technology that films the scene behind an object with a camera, then projects that footage via a projector onto retroreflective material attached to the object, blending it into the background. Professor Inami’s research group has been working on it since the late 1990s. It’s also known for being featured in TIME magazine’s ‘Inventions of the Year’ in 2003. As pointed out in the thread, this method assumes a specific viewpoint and a specific background — the camouflage breaks down when viewed from anywhere other than straight ahead, and it can’t handle infrared, among other major practical limitations. Many people associate this with the thermo-optical camouflage from ‘Ghost in the Shell,’ but according to the article, Professor Inami’s original inspiration was actually Doraemon — once again highlighting the pattern where science fiction proposes a technology first and real-world research chases after it later. Despite decades of ongoing research, the fact that it ‘can still only be viewed through a monitor’ is worth noting as a telling symbol of the technology’s limits.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Science News+) thread ‘[Researcher] What Started as a Sideshow Became the ‘World’s Greatest Invention’… University of Tokyo Professor Achieves Vanishing ‘Optical Camouflage,’ Inspired by ‘Reading This Manga’.’
