Toyota reveals its work on an honest-to-goodness cloak of invisibility
- Reference: 1623932109
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/06/17/toyota_paper_invisibility/
- Source link:
"We are always looking for ways to keep drivers and passengers safe while driving," explained author Debasish Banerjee of the work, which was led by the Toyota Research Institute of North America in partnership with South Korea's Inha University and the University of Michigan. "We started exploring whether we could make the light go around the pillar so it appeared transparent."
While the stanchions framing a car's windscreen provide a key aspect of its structural integrity, they're annoyingly located right where you would want to look in order to see other road users. Removing them would weaken the car, so Toyota's looking into the next best thing: rendering them invisible.
[1]
The result of its research into that somewhat tricky problem: a paper which reviews the various methods by which optical cloaking may be achieved. Should the company's efforts succeed, it's likely to find itself buried under hefty bags of money from a wide range of intelligence and military agencies around the world, who are impressed enough when you can [2]hide tanks from radar or turn a jet [3]into a flock of birds .
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[6]'Screen access technology has existed for decades': Visually impaired man sues Dell over 'inaccessible' website
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"Perfect optical cloaking requires the total scattering of electromagnetic waves around an object at all angles, all polarisations, over a wide frequency range, irrespective of the medium," the researchers wrote in the paper's abstract. "Such a device is still far-fetched, requiring the transformation of space around a cloaked region such that the phase velocity is faster than other areas to preserve the phase relationships.
"However, by simplifying the invisibility requirements, pioneering work on spherical transformation cloaks, carpet cloaks, plasmonic cloaks, and mantle cloaks has been realised in narrowband microwave, infrared, and even optical wavelengths."
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The paper ran through a wide range of experiments, theoretical and otherwise, which have been undertaken for cloaking, ranging from metamaterial-based physical cloaks and an "intelligent cloak" made from a reconfigurable metasurface to a "unidirectional invisible cloak," geometrical optics-based cloaking - including the surprisingly simple approach of, effectively, putting mirrors around the object to be hidden - and digital cloaks which combine cameras and an "output surface" display.
"Despite the many challenges outlined herein," the team's paper concluded, "it is undeniable that in recent years, optical invisibility has become a fact rather than ideas from fiction books. Useful cloaking devices have been successfully realised beyond electromagnetics including acoustics, thermal, and fluidic devices, owing to their low-loss physical characteristics compared to optical devices.
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"While most of the studies focus on fundamental physics and cloaking device proof of concept designs, it is worth pointing out that the need for invisibility in modern society will remain high in the future. Starting from obvious applications in areas such as modern warfare, surveillance, blind-spot removal in vehicles, spacecraft, and highly efficient solar cells, applications in sensing and display devices are virtually endless."
The team concluded that we may one day "enjoy optical cloaking technology in everyday life" - but stopped short of offering a timescale to mail-order invisibility cloaks being advertised in the backs of grubby magazines next to the X-ray specs.
The paper is available under open access terms in the [11]Journal of Applied Physics . ®
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[2] https://www.theregister.com/2013/11/13/antenna_invisibility_cloak/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2013/01/23/chinese_boffins_cloak_soldiers/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/07/invisible_sculpture_is_a_must/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/28/scientists_looking_for_quantum_discovery/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/05/giannaros_v_dell/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/22/bofh_2021_episode_1/
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[11] https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0048846
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: I remember a SciFi book about this.
"sometime real soon now(TM)"
I'll expect it some time after I get a Mr Fusion to power my flying car then.
Re: I remember a SciFi book about this.
@ShadowSystems "There was a sneak thief that wore a body suit of the stuff & enjoyed robbing folks blind."
I think that would be robbing folks while blind. No light would reach the thief's eyes. ;)
Re: I remember a SciFi book about this.
Single molecule light receptors & emitters would not work. To be able to interact with light, the device must be bigger than the wavelength of light. It's why you need an electron microscope to see things smaller than a certain size. Things smaller than the wavelength of the light (or other EM radiation) being used just don't reflect (or obstruct) that light, so no amount of magnification will allow you to see it.
It's also why UV light is used to image ICs with small geometries. Visible light has a wavelength greater than the size of the features on the IC.
But you don't need a pixel size anything like as small as a molecule. So long as the field of view has at least as many pixels as the number of rods and cones in your retina, the granularity will not be detectable.
Re: I remember a SciFi book about this.
What's wrong with good ole-fashioned transparent aluminium?
Interesting
Interesting Toyota is doing this for better all around vision not to hide something. I wonder how far along some black cloaking project is?
Re: Interesting
I suspect it's a paper put together by a couple of recent graduates, who were given the job of seeing whether there was any practical way of doing this.
I wouldn't hold your breath, for it to work properly on both windscreen pillars for any driver position, they've basically got to build a holographic display that can be wrapped around a doubly curved surface. The sensor required to capture the 3D image to be shown is also pure fiction at the moment.
Re: Interesting
> I suspect it's a paper put together by a couple of recent graduates
Yes, just an academic exercise in writing papers. Current systems could detect objects in your forward blind spot, warn the driver and provide a camera view when needed. Essentially like the rear blind spot warning systems available now.
A true cloaking device will have to wait for that error-corrected 1000 qbit quantum computer that should be ready any time now.
Re: Interesting
Given that it's only "targets" in two relatively narrow regions that need to be revealed and the observer is a driver who can't move too far from a fixed location if they plan to control the vehicle (assuming that we aren't talking about a Tesla owner who thinks that back seat driving is a real, feasible thing) This just might be doable someday. Maybe even sometime soon. But a bit later than that would be my bet.
In the meantime can we have two cameras aimed at the areas obscured by posts, and a button on the steering wheel that will temporarily put the images they are capturing onto the display used by the backup camera/entertainment system/GPS readout?
Re: Interesting
Rather than pressing a button, and looking at a screen, the driver could just move their head, so they don't have to refocus their vision from a point outside the vehicle to a screen inside the vehicle, with the corresponding slight drop in situational awareness....
A fully functional cloaking device
Cling on to that thought!
Re: A fully functional cloaking device
Take your upvote and get out.
Re: A fully functional cloaking device
don't you spell Cling on : r o m u l a n?
And, what happens to prey when the bird is no longer visible?
no need for perfection
What matters for me as a driver is to be aware there is something in this direction, as well as how does this something roughly looks like.
As long as there is a big enough surface of really transparent stuff (a.k.a. windscreen and windows), a blur, not invisible, pillar area may be enough
What about the other Deathly Hallows?
Who's making the Elder Wand? Raytheon, Lockheed, or BAE?
Is there a Resurrection Stone in the offing from Big Pharma?
All jokes aside, I'd love to see this cloak. Or not see, I suppose, but experience it.
Please leave your invisibility cloaks in the cloakroom before entering the premises....
On the way out:
"erm, I've lost my cloakroom ticket"
"Sigh, which one is it?"
"the invisible one"
As an addition, it should be pointed out that the safety uses of this technology are gained by having the "invisibility" on the inside of the vehicle, rather than the outside, which would make it much less safe.........
Easy peasy
Add cameras on the exterior to record the images that are blocked by the pillar.
Use sensors to determine the driver's eye position.
Cover the pillar with screens.
Compute the amount and position of the video to show and display it on the pillar screens.
Re: Easy peasy
And not that novel:
https://www.evo.co.uk/jaguar/14825/jaguar-land-rover-develops-invisible-pillars-and-ghost-car-technology
Re: Easy peasy
One of the more flashy US trucks (i.e. pickups) is being touted with a system that renders any large trailer you may be towing invisible to the driver, the better to see any other vehicles you may be inconveniencing. Well, it's just a camera system on the trailer and some processing, but it has the sales droids dancing in the streets.
Er, why??
Improving visibility is pointless in a world where people rarely pay attention to anything else on the road anyway.
I remember a SciFi book about this.
A material that was essentially a 1x1 molecule grid of light receptors & light emitters. You wrapped the item to be cloaked in the stuff & the receptors on one side were retransmitted on the opposite side, thus making the item inside essentially invisible. It worked from any angle, in real time, in pretty much every band of emitted radiation. There was a alien spaceship sitting on the bottom of the ocean just waiting for a new crew to come claim it. There was a sneak thief that wore a body suit of the stuff & enjoyed robbing folks blind.
Granted making single molecule EMF receptors & emitters is still a bit beyond mere civilian commercial tech of today, but given how hard the military pours billions of dollars & thousands of man hours into cracking such issues, I wouldn't be surprised if those grubby magazines start advertising such suits "sometime real soon now(TM)".