fea-cloaking

Researchers at the University of Rochester in New York have built a cloaking device using simple lenses; one that works from a range of viewpoints to bend light around an object and make it appear invisible.

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Simple cloaking with lenses or mirrors is pretty straightforward, but it generally depends on the viewer remaining in a particular position. What Professor John Hopkins and his team have done, however, is to build a device which works from a range of angles, so that as the viewer moves, they observe a parallax effect with the visible background, while the cloaked object remains invisible.

In the simplest version of the device, as demonstrated in the video above, the viewer can move within a range of about 15 degrees without the object becoming visible.

While the military applications are obvious, Professor Hopkins envisages a range of possible applications for cloaking, such as letting a surgeon look through his hands to see what he is operating on, or allow truck drivers to see through blind spots on their vehicles.

A patent has been filed for the device.

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About the Author: Conn Ó Muíneacháin
Conn Ó Muíneacháin works at Blacknight, Ireland's largest provider of domains and hosting. He's an award-winning radio producer, podcaster and blogger. He's an engineer as well (not the award-winning kind). Conn produces video for Blacknight and edits Technology.ie. Labhair Gaeilge leis!
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1 min readCategories: VideoTags: , , Last Updated: October 6, 2014

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