Metamaterials, AI, and the Road to Invisibility Cloaks
open.substack.comYou don't need metamaterials. There are various patents on "invisibility cloak" systems, and most of them use screens and cameras to project what's behind the wearer onto the front-facing screen, e.g.: https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2016160588A1
Some others, mostly intended for military vehicles, aim to match surface IR emissions to the background.
Using metamaterials -- which need to be printed or, even worse, made with lithography techniques -- adds unnecessary cost and vastly increases complexity.
Screens have a very limited range of brightness. More importantly, they only project a picture in one direction, so, if you can move laterally, you'll notice that it's a flat picture.
If metamaterials can alleviate any of that to some degree, they could make a form of invisibility cloak covering large objects practical.
Agree, both screens and metamaterials for this application have their pros and cons. Manufacturing metamaterials at a large scale is an area I'm looking into next!
Minor thing but how cool to use this on pillars of cars and have total visibility ?
This would actually be great! I guess the core challenge to achieving this would be in designing a metamaterial that meets the structural demands (strength-to-weight ratio) of a car body while also performing the complex wave manipulation required for invisibility. I wonder how far we are from reconciling those two very different requirements. Perhaps with the use of AI for metamaterials design we could be closer than we think!
They were talking about a cloak. So conceivably you just keep the existing materials and wrap this around it.
More than an invisibility cloak, I'd like to be able to "paint" my house with a programmable material that could change color/pattern.
Do you mean something like an e-ink display like on the BMW iX flow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpKO-VuHMFA
I knew a guy that was extremely upset to find out that there isn't a lenticular garage door product so he could have it display an "animated" image as it opened/closed.
HOA president enters the room..
Mostly only in the US.
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=588610 from 2009, when it was first shown this was possible.
Edit: and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2762325 which had more discussion
Thanks for sharing!
So confused when I read invincibility cloak.
You could probably make a bulletproof cloak out of kevlar right now.
Might be a little stiff though.
Now that really would be science fiction haha!
Ah yes, the dynamic structural assistance cloak. It is on the list.
Along with the aerodynamic lift and propulsion cloak.
The future is super.