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A_D_E_P_T 2 days ago

You 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.

nine_k 2 days ago | parent [-]

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.

Annabella_W 2 days ago | parent [-]

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!