A Tank which blends itself with the surroundings

What is the best way for any person, object or animal to hide himself/itself?

You guessed it right -- to blend with or to mimic the surroundings it is present at any moment.

Animals in wild do so all the time; some consciously, like a tiger. who normally places itself amidst long grass, which help its vertical stripes on coat, gel effortlessly; OR like a chameleon, which gets the blending ability by the grace of God, changes its skin color to match the immediate surroundings.

Hence mimicking the surroundings is the best ways to hide; unless someone gets some super power to become invisible in real sense.

Military scientists in Sweden have used the same mimicking principle to design a new "invisibility cloak" which they claim would make modern war tanks become invisible. Invisible not to only to eye! But also to heat seeking missiles, which are normally used today, to trace and destroy tanks, even without actually seeing them.

A team at BAE System in Sweden, has developed the new device, called Adaptiv, works on a new technology, which has scanners to read nearby buildings and terrain and can reproduce their pattern of hot and cold on panels on the hull of the vehicle. An infrared image of such a tank when produced blends the tank into its environment, showing just hot and cold regions unique to that particular location. The hot panels on the tank, are programmed to form an array of heat and cold regions that mimic a herd of cow standing, or a number of cars parked by road side. This tricks the enemy into thinking it might be anything, but a tank.

The Hexagonal metal plates –used in the hull of the tank, about the size of someone's hand, about 1,000 would be needed to cover a small tank -- which can be heated or cooled quickly, could be used to disguise buildings, ships or low-flying helicopters, believe the scientists.
According to the project director, Peter Sjolund, the system works as a thermal television screen. The computer used in the system also carries a library of images, so that it can mimic the surrounding with zero defect. In cases when the system finds the pictures from the library not suitable, then the user would be able to grab an image of a nearby object and use that instead.

The system also takes into account the location of the enemy and changes perspective of the panels accordingly.



The researchers informed that the technology is currently at its initial stages, requiring more sophisticated future developments. The full trials of the system will be carried out in the next two years; and the research is submitted to the UK's Ministry of Defense for consideration. --------

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