With Inspiration From the Sea—Cephalopods Inspire Camouflage Technology in Engineers
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Making a bit of innovation out of nature's abundant inspiration, engineers at the University of Illinois recently published in the journal PNAS that they have created new camouflaging technology based on the evolutionarily derived abilities of octopi and their close relatives cuttlefish.
A family of organisms known to mask their appearances in the wild, Cephalopods like the common octopus or cuttlefish are nature's natural camouflagers. With the ability to change color and brightness to any hue under the rainbow, with an uncanny likeness to its environment, this family of species has found that their evolutionarily-derived tactics can help them survive in nearly any environment-from the reefs of the Mediterranean to the vast expanse of the open ocean. And now researchers are hoping that with cue from the cuttlefish and what biologists know about their biochemical capabilities, that engineers can mimic these traits for field operatives around the world.
The new camouflaging technology comes in the form of a flexible cloth composed of a large grid of 1mm cells. Each cell containing a thermodynamic dye, changing color according to the temperature of the objects it comes into contact with. And the response is immediate.
"Animals in the natural world-particularly cephalopods: octopus, squid and cuttlefish-have really spectacular color-changing capabilities" which lead author Professor John Rogers at the University of Illinois says were the inspiration for the technological innovation. Looking to nature for a solution in an engineering context, Rogers says that this technology is the fruit of interdisciplinary collaboration between leading experts in biology, materials science, computational and electrical engineering. And the team has continued to look for ways of improving its application.
Mimicking the tri-layer skin of cephalopods, Rogers and his team developed a three-layer design for their camouflaging technology wherein the top layer contains color, the middle drives color change and the third, base layer senses the patterns to be copied. Using the three-fold approach, the technology in essence changes as response of a sort of sensory system the researchers have developed.
The base layer is formed by a sheet of photodetectors that capture light of the surrounding environment. Once the information is gathered, the middle layer which is made of heating diodes, raises the temperature of cells needed for color change. And at precisely 47oC, the black dye transforms to a translucent color, allowing for the base silver diodes to reflect light, like a shimmering white.
Although the technology is advancing and researchers have developed a strong base on which to build, Rogers' design is far from commercial and military applications, as the prototype can only respond in black and white. However, Rogers and his team are hopeful that further funding and continued research will one day soon lead to the Technicolor version of a cuttlefish-like outer skin for people to wear when they need to disappear in plain sight.
"This is the first full, working system of its kind; it looks like a thin sheet of paper. But it's nothing close to being ready to deploy, in a military setting or anything else" Rogers said. "It's really beginning point, to focus on the engineering science around how you might create systems that have this type of function."
