If a group of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have their way, the soldier of the future mumbling into his jacket won’t be a crazy person. He’ll be using microscopic fibers woven into his uniform to communicate with his battle buddies and clear up some of the fog of war.
Can you spot the gold threads in the Army Combat Uniform shown above? They’re not included for style — but they do provide a kind of demonstration. MIT and the Army wanted to prove that they could fabricate a uniform that included a kind of fiber optic-like thread developed through a joint effort that should allow soldiers’ threads to detect light, heat and sound.
Only the fibers don’t have any transistors, processors, or circuitry. “These are new kinds of fibers that are themselves devices,” says John Joannopoulos, the director of the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, a joint Army-MIT venture for far-out basic research.
via Wired
