The Invisible Truck

I love seeing new ideas for the application of technology and then combining it with new technology to see what problems can be solved.

In 2015 Samsung debuted the Invisible Truck. The concept was quite simple, they put a big screen TV on the back of an eighteen wheeler and some wireless cameras on the front. The result is that you can see “through” the truck! The idea being that you make it easier for people to safely pass a truck, particularly on two lane highways.

There is another technology that has been in development for a long time that makes for some compelling possibilities when combined with what Samsung did here. That is the creation of a digital fabric. Imagine buying a bolt of fabric and being able to drape it over a large object, like a car parked in your driveway, and having cameras connected to it in all four directions. So a camera in front of the car projects its image to the back “screen” and a camera on the left side projects its image onto the right “screen” and so on.

From a distance, you would see no car at all! It’s almost like Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak.

As a writer of spy thrillers, you can apply that concept to a boat. The protagonist can use it to elude detection on the open seas, particularly if they drape a sheet across the top of the boat and project an image of the ocean. They’d be all but invisible from the air!

Now apply that concept to the real world, and you get terrifying possibilities like the attack on the USS Cole. Clearly American war ships have many layers of protection, but as technology evolves, even what has become simple consumer technology can have dangerous applications. It makes you appreciate the difficulties that legislators face when trying to keep pace with technology.