Inventor plans 'invisible walls'

BBC NEWS | Technology | Inventor plans 'invisible walls': "Inventor plans 'invisible walls'

The invisible material is made of thousands of tiny beads

The inventor of an 'invisibility' cloak has said that his next project will be to develop the technology to allow people to see through walls.

Susumu Tachi, who showed off the cloak at an exhibition in San Francisco earlier this month, said he was hopeful of providing a way to provide a view of the outside in windowless rooms.

'This technology can be used in all kinds of ways, but I wanted to create a vision of invisibility,' he told BBC World Service's Outlook programme.

'My short-term goal would be, for example, to make a room that has no outside windows appear to have a view to the outside, then the wall would appear to be invisible.'

Professor Tachi's cloak works by projecting an image onto itself of what is behind the wearer.

A computer generates the image that is projected, so the viewer effectively sees 'through' the cloak."