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 Potters 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

combiner,

or

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. . The concept of optical camouflage is straight
forward to create the illusion of invisibility by covering an object with
something that projects the scene directly behind that object. This system
was conceived with the primary view in mind of concealing stationary or
moving objects such as men, vehicles, or aircraft from view and has
practical military, law enforcement, and security applications.

1.Introduction
Various methods have been proposed to integrate the visual space. In
the field of Mixed Reality, one of the most popular topics is about
displaying a virtual object into real world However making objects virtually
transparent, like in H.G. Wells Invisible Man can also be Seen as dream
of human being. In this paper, we describe what could be called a
camouflage Technique named Optical Camouflage.
Camouflage :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'.
Natural camouflage :In nature, there is a strong evolutionary pressure for animals to blend into
their environment or conceal their shape; for prey animals to avoid
predators and for predators to be able to sneak up on prey. Natural
camouflage is one method that animals use to meet these aims.

(Anolis caroliensis showing blending camouflage and counter shading.)

Military camouflage :
These were intended to daunt the enemy, attract recruits, foster unit
cohesion, allow easier identification of units in the fog of war.The British in
India in 1857 were forced by casualties to dye their red tunics to neutral
tones, initially a muddy tan called khaki.
The United States was quick to follow the British, going khaki in the same
year. Later in 20thcentury, digital camouflage patterns have been
exprerimented on helicopters, battledresses &other vehicles. It is termed
"digital" because much of the design was done on a computer and unlike
other camouflage patterns, it is blocky and appears almost pixelated.

Theory of Camouflage:
MacKay's statement above remains one of the most important elements in
the theory of camouflage - an exact match with the environment's colours is
less crucial than the patterning of the regions of colour themselves. Ideally,
camouflage should be made to break up and thereby conceal the structural
lines of the object which it hides. Thus, the patterns often seen on
camouflage clothing, masking cloth and vehicle paints are carefully
constructed to deceive the human eye by breaking up the boundaries that
define sharp edges and human silhouettes. This is called high difference or
disruptive camouflage. This mix of blending and disruptive patterns is called
coincident disruption - the aim of modern military camouflage.
The opposite of camouflage is making a person or object more visible and
easier to recognize,for example with retroreflectors and high-visibility
clothing.

What is Optical Camouflage?

Optical camouflage is a kind of active camouflage. This idea is very simple.
If you project background image onto the masked object, you can observe
the masked object just as if it were virtually transparent. 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. The most intriguing 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 computer feeds the
image into an external projector which projects the image onto a person
wearing a special retroreflective 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.
The downside is the large amount of external hardware required, along with
the fact that the illusion is only convincing when viewed from a certain
angle.
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. This would almost certainly require

sophisticated nanotechnology, as our computers, projectors, and cameras are

not yet miniaturized enough to meet these conditions.
Although the suit described above would provide a convincing illusion to the
naked eye of a human observer, 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

figure shows the principle of the optical camouflage using Xtal

vision. You can select camouflaged object to cover with retroreflector.

Moreover, to project a stereoscopic image, the observer looks at the
masking object more transparent.

In the above shown figure,This transparent cloak makes you see as if the
cloak is transparent by projecting the shooting image behind the person onto
the cloak i.e. It looks like three men walking behind are seen through
the body of the person. So, actually, the cloak is not really transparent.

How does it work?

First, putting the video camera behind the person in the cloak, and
capturing his background. Then, projecting the captured image onto the
cloak from the
projector. So, if you see from the peephole, you will see as if the cloak is
transparent. Because the image is projected by the technology called
Retro-reflective Projection Technology (RPT), you can see the reflection
only on the cloak and clearly even in brightness.

Retro-reflective Projection Technology(RPT):Now that we ve seen how does optical camouflage works using RPT &
Xstal vision let us illustrate RPT. When using a See-Through Head-mounted
Display (STHMD) to merge virtual and real environments, the operator may
see the image of a virtual object that is meant to be located behind a real
object. This contradicts our intuition of depth, since the projected image of an
object located behind another object in one's field of view will be obstructed
at least partially. This depth cue is called occlusion, and is critical for the

effectiveness of the presentation of virtual objects in three dimensions. To

solve the occlusion contradiction problem, we developed RPT.
The three key techniques of RPT are the followings:
1-To use an object covered by retro-reflective material as a screen;
2-To place a projector into a position optically conjugated with the observer's
eye by using
a half-mirror;
3-To make the projector's iris as small as possible (by using a pinhole).
Each of these points provides the following advantages, respectively:

Fig.5

Fig 6

Fig.5 and Fig.6 shows the principles of RPT. The image of a virtual object is
projected through a pinhole. The projected image is reflected by the halfmirror on a right angle and then retro-reflected by the retro-reflective screen.

( no need)

Requirements of an optical camouflage system

The things needed to make a person appear invisible are:

A garment made from highly reflective material

A video camera

A computer

A projector

A special, half-silvered mirror called a combiner

Let's look at each of these components in greater detail.

The Cloak:

The cloak that enables optical camouflage to work is made from a special
material known as retro-reflective material. A retro-reflective material is
covered with thousands and thousands of small beads. When light strikes one
of these beads, the light rays bounce back exactly in the same direction from
which they came. A rough surface creates a diffused reflection because the
incident (incoming) light rays get scattered in many different directions. A
perfectly smooth surface, like that of a mirror, creates what is known as a
specular reflection -- a reflection in which incident light rays and reflected
light rays form the exact same angle with the mirror surface. In retroreflection, the glass beads act like prisms, bending the light rays by a process
known as refraction.This causes the reflected light rays to travel back along
the same path as the incident light rays. The result: An observer situated at the
light source receives more of the reflected light and therefore sees a brighter
reflection. Retro-reflective materials are actually quite common. Traffic signs,
road markers and bicycle reflectors all take advantage of retro-reflection to be
more visible to people driving at night. Movie screens used in most modern
commercial theaters also take advantage of this material because it allows for
high brilliance under dark conditions. In optical camouflage, the use of retroreflective material is critical because it can be seen from far away and outside
in bright sunlight-- two requirements for the illusion of invisibility.

The Video Camera:

The retro-reflective garment doesn't actually make a person invisible -- in
fact, it's perfectly opaque. What the garment does is create an illusion of
invisibility by acting like a movie screen onto which an image from the
background is projected. Capturing the background image requires a video
camera, which sits behind the person wearing the cloak. The video from the
camera must be in a digital format so it can be sent to a computer for
processing.
The Computer:
All augmented-reality systems rely on powerful computers to synthesize
graphics and then superimpose them on a real-world image. For optical

camouflage to work, the hardware/software combo must take the captured

image from the video camera, calculate the appropriate perspective to
stimulate reality and transform the captured image into the image that will be

projected onto the retro-reflective material. The projected image is composed

by computer using animage-based rendering method.

The Projector:
The modified image produced by the computer must be shone onto the
garment, which acts like a movie screen. A projector accomplishes this
task by shining a light beam through an opening controlled by a device
called an iris diaphragm. An iris diaphragm is made of thin, opaque
plates, and turning a ring changes the diameter of the central opening. For
optical camouflage to work properly, this opening must be the size of a
pinhole. Why? This ensures a larger depth of field so that the screen (in
this case the cloak) can be located any distance from the projector.

The Combiner:
The system requires a special mirror to both reflect the projected image
toward the cloak and to let light rays bouncing off the cloak return to the
user's eye. This special mirror is called a beam splitter, or a combiner -- a
half-silvered mirror that both reflects light (the silvered half) and
transmits light (the transparent half). If properly positioned in front of the
user's eye, the combiner allows the user to perceive both the image
enhanced by the computer and light from the surrounding world. This is
critical because the computer-generated image and the real-world scene
must be fully integrated for the illusion of invisibility to seem realistic.
The user has to look through a peephole in this mirror to see the
augmented reality.

The Complete System:

Now let's put all of these components together to see how the invisibility
cloak appears to make a person transparent. The diagram below shows the
typical arrangement of all of the various devices and pieces of equipment.

Once a person puts on the cloak made with the retro-reflective

material, here's the sequence of events:
1.

A digital video camera captures the scene behind the person

wearing the cloak.

2.

The computer processes the captured image and makes the

calculations necessary to adjust the still image or video so it will look
realistic when it is projected.

3. The projector receives the enhanced image from the computer and shines
the image through a pinhole-sized opening onto the combiner.

4. The silvered half of the mirror, which is completely reflective, bounces

the projected image toward the person wearing the cloak.
5. The cloak acts like a movie screen, reflecting light directly back to the
source, which in this case is the mirror.
6.Light rays bouncing off of the cloak pass through the transparent part of
the mirror and fall on the user's eyes. Remember that the light rays
bouncing off of the cloak contain the image of the scene that exists behind
the person wearing the cloak. The person wearing the cloak appears
invisible because the background scene is being displayed onto the retroreflective material. At the same time, light rays from the rest of the world
are allowed reach the user's eye, making it seem as if an invisible person
exists in an otherwise normal-looking world.

Inherent Physical Problems With Cloaking An Object :

Parametrical design considerations

Resolution Factors
Parallax, View angle and range dependency, Tilt angle, and Perspective.

Reflections and Glint

Parameters were treated in depth by Schowengerdt and Schweizer in
1993 8 - Parallax is most critical and is summarized below and on next

page .
Angular resolution, A, is basically a function of the wavelength, ,
and the diameter, d, of the observers aperture (A = /d ).
= 500 nm for the effective central wavelength of

visible light

For human eye, A = 1 minute of arc = 0.0003 radian

For 10 inch (25 cm) diameter telescope, A = 0.000002

radian

Minimum range of an object necessary to escape

detection is a function of the observers resolution, distance of the object
from the observer, the

distance of the object from the background, and lateral motion of the
observer necessary to detect the target.

Real-World Applications:
While an invisibility cloak is an interesting application of optical
camouflage, it's probably not the most useful one. Here are some practical
ways the technology might be applied:
Pilots landing a plane could use this technology to make cockpit floors
transparent. This would enable them to see the runway and the landing gear
simply by glancing down.

Doctors performing surgery could use optical camouflage to see through their
hands and instruments to the underlying tissue. See Tachi Lab: Optical
Camouflage: oc-phantom.mpg to watch a video of how this might work.

Providing a view of the outside in windowless rooms is one of the more

fanciful applications of the technology, but one that might improve the
psychological well-being of people in such environments.
Drivers backing up cars could benefit one day from optical camouflage. A
quick glance backward through a transparent rear hatch or tailgate would
make it easy to know when to stop.
One of the most promising applications of this technology, however, has
less to do with making objects invisible and more about making them
visible. The concept is called mutual telexistence: working and perceiving
with the feeling that you are in several places at once. Here's how it works:

Human user A is at one location while his telexistence robot A is at

another location with human user B.

Human user B is at one location while his telexistence robot B is at

another location with human user A.

Both telexistence robots are covered in retro-reflective material so

that they act like screens.

With video cameras and projectors at each location, the images of

the two human users are projected onto their respective robots in
the remote locations.

This gives each human the perception that he is working with another
human instead of a robot.

Results:
Fig(a) shows the haptic display (real object) hiding the virtual object, but
Optical Camouflage techniques permit to make the haptic display to
become

transparent.However,

the

operators

hand

is

not

made

transparent,which implies that it is possible to use this technique

selectively.
Fig(b) shows a demonstration of Invisible Cloak. It looks as if a red
truck can be seen through the body of a man who wear a retro-reflective
coat. Actually, he does not become transparent perfectly. The shape of the
coat isobserved clearly. Nevertheless, it looks like a very low refractive
index glasswork, which is enough to observe the background.

Fig(a).Optical camouflaged haptic display

Fig (b). Invisible cloak

Head-mounted Displays:
Of course, making the observer stand behind a stationary combiner is
not very pragmatic -- no augmented-reality system would be of much
practical use if the user had to stand in a fixed location. That's why most
systems require that the user carry the computer on his or her person, either
in a backpack or clipped on the hip. It's also why most systems take

advantage of head-mounted displays, or HMDs, which assemble the

combiner and optics in a wearable device.

There are two types of HMDs: optical see-through displays and video
see-through displays. Optical see-through displays look like high-tech
goggles, sort of like the goggles Cyclops wears in the X-Men comic books
and movies. These goggles provide a display and optics for each eye, so
the user sees the augmented reality in stereo. Video see-through displays,
on the other hand, use video-mixing technology to combine the image
from a head-worn camera with computer-generated graphics.
In this arrangement, video of the real world is mixed with synthesized
graphics and then presented on a liquid-crystal display. The great advantage
of video see-through displays is that virtual objects can fully obscure realworld objects and vice versa.

HEAD MOUNTED PROJECTOR

Two projectors -- one for each eye -- are required to produce a stereoscopic
effect

Conclusion
We have developed an Optical Camouflage system.Optical Camouflage
can be used on surgical globes or equipments so they dont block surgeons
view during delicate operations. In aviation, cockpit floors couldbecome
'invisible' to assist pilots during landing. The weak point of this technique
is that the observer needs to look through a half-mirror. The current system
needs a half-mirror and projectors, which were fixed onthe ground. In the
next step of our research, an observer would be able to observe the
background image from various viewpoint with H.M.P. (Head-Mounted
Projector).