U.S. troops could someday be wearing camouflage that changes color and texture to blend with nearby surroundings, similar to the skin of an octopus.
Many cephalopods, a group that includes cuttlefish, squid and octopuses, can change their color and texture as needed, and new research has brought human engineers a step closer to mimicking that incredible ability.
"It's a fantastic quality, and one unprecedented in human engineering," said lead researcher Xuanhe Zhao, an MIT mechanical engineering professor, as quoted by the Washington Post.
Detailing their findings in a new study published Tuesday in Nature Communications, the team led by Zhao has developed a flexible material that shifts in both color and texture in response to electric voltage.
"It changes its fluorescence and texture together, in response to a change in voltage applied to it--essentially, changing at the flip of a switch," study co-author Qiming Wang described in a statement.
The research is mostly likely to go toward military equipment, but the new findings could also eventually be applied to create large, flexible display screens and coatings for ships, Zhao said.
"The U.S. military spends millions developing different kinds of camouflage patterns, but they are all static," Zhao said. "Modern warfare requires troops to deploy in many different environments during single missions. This system could potentially allow dynamic camouflage in different environments."
The material is still in initial stages of development and can't shift both color and texture yet; currently, color and texture still have to change as a pair.
"Currently they can only induce one kind of pattern in each type of material. It will be important to be able to change the patterns," Zhenan Bao, a professor of chemical engineering at Stanford University who was not involved in the study, said in a statement. Bao said the project was "inspiring work," according to an MIT news release.
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