The team from the company, which launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter on Tuesday, March 26, spent four years developing and testing optical cloaking technology to create its latest shields, according to the AP.
The Invisibility Shield 2.0 is supposed to be “larger, lighter, stronger, more stable, brighter and easier to carry” than its first version presented last year, according to information from the New Atlas server.
“The possibilities are endless, but most important of all, these shields are great fun,” said the company’s designer, Tristan Thompson. “They’re fun to play with and exciting for us to make,” he admitted, adding that they first wanted to test how far they could push the technology.
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“A truly functional invisible shield that you can also simply roll up and throw over your shoulder? Just two years ago, no one would have thought that this was possible,” he claims.
Three sizes
The shield takes the form of a curved sheet of high-quality clear polycarbonate and works through the use of ultra-large, carefully designed lenses. The lens array that forms the face of the shield scatters ambient light that reflects from the person standing behind the shield away from the observer on the other side. Due to the shape and placement of the lenses, the light from the background on either side spreads across the face of the shield and is directed towards the observer, effectively covering everything behind them – and at any distance.
So the result is that whoever looks at the shield from the front sees only diffused background light, which directly blends with his view of the background itself.
The shield works best if the user is wearing light-colored clothing and if the background is relatively uniform in appearance.
The two largest models produced so far are equipped with ergonomic handles that allow the user to carry the device. Three sizes are available: approx. 20, 91 and 183 centimeters.
Assuming that the crowdfunding campaign is successful and the Invisibility Shield 2.0 – in all three versions – goes into series production, we will reportedly purchase the individual sizes for 54, 299 and 699 pounds (approx. 1,600, 8,850 and 20,700 CZK).
Each piece is fully waterproof, requires no rechargeable batteries and is made from completely recyclable materials, according to the startup.
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