Digital invisibility is a rare commodity in the 21st century. And that applies not only to fingerprints on the World Wide Web, but often also to the street or public facilities. A new camouflage technology should drastically reduce the problem in the future.
Cameras are now very popular not only on the streets of London and among Slavic drivers. Security cameras are now part of everyday life. If you are in a city, you should be captured by a camera relatively quickly. At least that’s how it was until now. A new type of cape should now be able to prevent this by tricking camera AIs.
INVISIBILITY CLOAK À LA HARRY POTTER INVENTED IN CHINA
Four doctoral students from the University of Wuhan have developed camouflage clothing, InvisDefense, which is intended to trick the artificial intelligence of security cameras on the one hand and not be so conspicuous that the wearer is an eye-catcher in public on the other. The camouflage function is made possible by special patterns generated by an algorithm. Surveillance cameras then recognize the object as such, but do not identify it as a human being. During the night, integrated thermal devices generate different temperature areas so that the resulting heat signature confuses even infrared cameras.
“Nowadays, many surveillance devices can recognize the human body,” said Professor Wang Zheng, who oversaw the project: “Our InvisDefense allows the camera to see you, but it cannot tell if you are human.” Wuhan University campus, the detection accuracy of the security cameras there dropped by 57 percent. But in order for the researchers to reach this number, it took a whole series of failures. The four-person team is said to have developed the camouflage clothing only after more than 700 failed attempts. Still, Wei Hui, one of the researchers involved in the project, says the cost could be relatively affordable at just 500 renminbi yuan (about $70).
According to Wei, the researchers also want to make other objects invisible to security cameras in the future, such as inanimate objects and moving automobiles. However, the human eye still cannot trick the InvisDefense technology.
