Researchers drew inspiration from the skins of marine life to develop a new camouflage system that will automatically change its color depending on the surroundings.
Study lead author Cunjiang Yu from the University of Houston worked with John A. Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Yonggang Huang of Northwestern University to study the camouflage behavior of the cephalopods.
Cephalopods are marine animals characterized by bilateral body symmetry, a prominent head and a set of arms or tentacles and include octopus, squid and cuttlefish. This group is known as the underwater "masters of camouflage" underwater for their ultimate vanishing act by matching their color to their background when threatened by predators.
The researchers developed a flexible skin device that will automatically change its color according to the background. The device initially works with white, black and gray backgrounds, but can be enhanced to adapt in full-color spectrum. It is equipped with ultrathin layers, semiconductor actuators, switching components, light sensors and color-changing materials.
"Our device sees color and matches it. It reads the environment using thermochromatic material," Yu said in a university news release.
The study was funded by the Office of Naval Research and it will be mainly used for military applications.
Rogers said that the device is far from perfectly matching a cephalopod skin, but the team was able to develop something close. The research team is also working on adaptive sheets that can wrap around solid objects and change forms.
"As an engineer looking at movies of squid, octopuses and cuttlefish, you just realize that you're not going to get close to that level of sophistication," Rogers told National Geographic. "We tried to abstract the same principles and do the best we can with what we've got."
Further details of the technology were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
