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Optical Camouflage OPTICAL CAMOUFLAGE A SEMINAR REPORT Submitted by SUDEESH S in partial fulfillment for the award of the degree of BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY in COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING COCHIN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE &TECHNOLOGY, KOCHI-682022 AUGUST 2008 DIVISION OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING COCHIN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, COCHIN-682022 Bonafide Certificate Certified that this is a bonafide record of the Seminar Entitled “Optical Camouflage ” Done by SUDEESH S Of VIIth semester, Computer Science and Engineering in the year 2008 in partial fulfillment of the requirements to the award of Degree Of Bachelor Of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering of Cochin University of Science and Technology. Ms. Sheena S . Dr. David Peter Seminar Guide Head of Department Date: ACKNOWLEDGEMENT At the outset, I thank the Lord Almighty for the grace, strength and hope to make my endeavor a success. I also express my gratitude to Dr. David Peter, Head of the Department and my Seminar Guide for providing me with adequate facilities, ways and means by which I was able to complete this seminar. I express my sincere gratitude to him for his constant support and valuable suggestions without which the successful completion of this seminar would not have been possible. I thank Ms.Sheena S, my seminar guide for her boundless cooperation and helps extended for this seminar. I express my immense pleasure and thankfulness to all the teachers and staff of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, CUSAT for their cooperation and support. Last but not the least, I thank all others, and especially my classmates and my family members who in one way or another helped me in the successful completion of this work. ABSTRACT While new high-performance, light-transmitting materials such as aerogel and light-transmitting concrete compel us to question the nature of solidity, a new technology developed by University of Tokyo seeks to make matter disappear altogether. Scientists at Tachi Laboratory have developed Optical Camouflage, which utilizes a collection of devices working in concert to render a subject invisible. Although more encumbering and complicated than Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak, this system has essentially the same goal, rendering invisibility by slipping beneath the shining, silvery cloth. Optical Camouflage requires the use of clothing – in this case, a hooded jacket – made with a retro-reflective material, which is comprised by thousands of small beads that reflect light precisely according to the angle of incidence. A digital video camera placed behind the person wearing the cloak captures the scene that the individual would otherwise obstruct, and sends data to a computer for processing. A sophisticated program calculates the appropriate distance and viewing angle, and then transmits scene via projector using a combiner, or a half silvered mirror with an optical hole, which allows a witness to perceive a realistic merger of the projected scene with the background – thus rendering the cloak-wearer invisible. Table of contents Chapter Contents Page no. List of Figures ii 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Optical Camouflage- an overvie w 2 2 Technology Focus 3 3 Altered Reality 4 4 Block Diagram 7 4.1 Description 7 4.2 Working 8 5 Retro reflectivity 9 6 Video Camera & Projector 16 6.1 Video Camera 16 6.2 Projector 17 7 Comp uter and Combiner 18 7.1 Computer 18 7.2 Combiner 18 8 Flowchart 19 9 Head Mounted Display 21 10 Real World Applications 23 11 Drawbacks 26 12 Future Enhancements 27 13 Conclusion 28 14 References 29 i LIST OF FIGURES Page No . Figure 3.1 Display of GPS 4 Figure 3.2 Relation of Different Environment 5 Figure 3.3 Monitor Based Augmented Reality 5 Figure 3.4 Components of Augmented Reality 6 Figure 4.1 Block Diagram 7 Figure 5.1 Surface Reflectivity 10 Figure 5.2 Retro Reflective Material 11 Figure 8.1 Complete System 20 Figure 9.1 Head Mounted Display 21 Figure 10.1 Mutual Telexistence 25 Figure 12.1 Adaptive Camouflage 27 Figure 12.2 Combat Aircraft 27 Figure 13.1 Present System of Invisibility 28 Figure 13.2 Future of Invisibility 28 ii Optical camouflage CHAPTER - 1 INTRODUCTION Invisibility has been on humanity's wish list at least since Amon-Ra, a deity who could disappear and reappear at will, joined the Egyptian pantheon in 2008 BC. With recent advances in optics and computing and with the advent of flexible electronics such as a flexible liquid crystal display, that would allow the background image to be displayed on the material itself, however, this elusive goal is no longer purely imaginary. In 2003, three professors at University of Tokyo — Susumu Tachi, Masahiko Inami and Naoki Kawakami — created a prototypical camouflage system in which a video camera takes a shot of the background and displays it on the cloth using an external projector. They can even reflect images when the material is wrinkled. The same year Time magazine named it the coolest invention of 2003. It is an interesting application of optical camouflage and is called the Invisibility Cloak . Through the clever application of some dirt-cheap technology, the Japanese inventor has brought personal invisibility a step closer to reality. Their 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 key development of the cloak, however, was the development of a new material called retro- reflectum. Professor Tachi says that this material allows you to see a three-dimensional image. The computer feeds the image into an external projector which projects the image onto a person wearing a special retro reflective coat. This can lead to different results depending on the quality of the camera, the projector, and the coat, but by the late nineties, convincing illusions were created. That was only one invention created in this field and researches are still being carried out in order to implement it using nanotechnology. Division Of Computer Engineering, SOE, CUSAT -1- Optical camouflage 1.1 OPTICAL CAMOUFLAGE – AN OVERVIEW Optical camouflage is a kind of active camouflage which completely envelopes the wearer. It displays an image of the scene on the side opposite the viewer on it, so that the viewer can "see through" the wearer, rendering the wearer invisible. The idea is relatively straightforward: to create the illusion of invisibility by covering an object with something that projects the scene directly behind that object. If you project background image onto the masked object, you can observe the masked object just as if it were virtually transparent. Optical camouflage can be applied for a real scene. In the case of a real scene, a photograph of the scene is taken from the operator’s viewpoint, and this photograph is projected to exactly the same place as the original. Actually, applying HMP-based optical camouflage to a real scene requires image-based rendering techniques. As for camouflage , it means to blend with the surroundings. Camouflage is the method which allows an otherwise visible organism or object to remain indiscernible from the surrounding environment. Examples include a tiger's stripes and the battledress of a modern soldier. Camouflage is a form of deception. The word camouflage comes from the French word 'camoufler' meaning 'to disguise'. The camouflage technique of disguise is not as common as coloration, but can be found throughout nature as well. Animals may disguise themselves as something uninteresting in the hopes that their predators will ignore them or as something dangerous so that predators will avoid them. And so had humans the desire to disguise themselves just as some animals could do. 19th century armies tended to use bright colors and bold, impressive designs. These were intended to daunt the enemy, attract recruits, foster unit cohesion, or allow easier identification of units in the fog of war. The transfer of camouflage patterns from battle to exclusively civilian uses is a recent phenomenon. The concept of camouflage - to conceal and distort shapes - is also a popular artistic tool. Division Of Computer Engineering, SOE, CUSAT -2- Optical camouflage CHAPTER -2 TECHNOLOGY FOCUS Although optical is a term that technically refers to all forms of light, most proposed forms of optical camouflage would only provide invisibility in the visible portion of the spectrum. Optics ( appearance or look in ancient Greek) is a branch of physics that describes the behavior and properties of light and the interaction of light with matter. Optics explains optical phenomena. The pure science aspects of the field are often called optical science or optical physics. This technology is currently only in a very primitive stage of development. 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. For a surface subject to bending like a flexible suit, a massive amount of computing power and embedded sensors would be necessary to continuously project the correct images in all directions. More sophisticated machinery would be necessary to create perfect illusions in other electromagnetic bands, such as the infrared band. Sophisticated target-tracking software could ensure that the majority of computing power is focused on projecting false images in those directions where observers are most likely to be present, creating the most realistic illusion possible. This would likely require Phase Array Optics, which would project light of a specific amplitude and phase and therefore provide even greater levels of invisibility.
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