Engineers have created a drone that camouflages itself as a faint, hovering haze when it takes flight.
The "Phantom Twist" prototype drone is a carefully engineered robot that utilizes motion blur to hide in plain sight — opening up a new frontier in low-visibility flight. Scientists say it could reshape how drones monitor wildlife, survey ecosystems and inspect infrastructure.
Most stealth drones try to disappear by changing their appearance, using camouflage paint, transparent plastics or complex optical tricks to bend or scatter light. The Phantom Twist takes a fundamentally different approach by exploiting how humans and animals perceive motion.
The scientists who created the drone outlined their findings in a study presented July 16 at the conference Robotics: Science and Systems in Sydney, Australia.
"Most efforts to hide drones focus on...
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