A comic gave a Tokyo professor a big idea

Professor^*1 Masahiko Inami works at the University of Tokyo, a university in Tokyo, the capital of Japan. In an interview on April 9, 2021, he talked about his work. He explained that a comic gave him the idea for a real technology^*2.

The technology is called "optical camouflage^*3." It shows a picture of the things behind a person on the person's body. So other people can see through that person. The idea came from "Ghost in the Shell," a Japanese science fiction^*4 comic. In the comic, there is a technology called "thermo-optical camouflage."

Professor Inami studied 3D^*5 pictures and augmented reality^*6 for a long time. One day, he had a thought. If you show the things behind a person as a 3D picture, that person looks transparent^*7. Then he thought, "That is the same as the thermo-optical camouflage in Ghost in the Shell!" The word "camouflage" helped him too. Camouflage matches colors with the background. This gave him the idea of matching the picture with the background.

Professor Inami has worked at the University of Tokyo for many years. He finished his doctoral studies^*8 at the university's Graduate School of Engineering in March 1999. In September 2001, he became an assistant at the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology. He became a professor there in November 2015. In April 2016, he also became a professor at the university's Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology.

Professor Inami also talked about another idea. He wants to use technology to help people's bodies do more things. He is now working on this idea.

1. *1 professor: a teacher at a university who is the top expert in a subject
2. *2 technology: machines and tools that come from science
3. *3 camouflage: colors or shapes that make a thing look like the things around it, so it is hard to see
4. *4 science fiction: stories about the future, space, or machines that do not exist yet
5. *5 3D: a picture that looks like it has depth, like a real thing, not flat
6. *6 augmented reality: a way of putting computer pictures on top of what you see in the real world
7. *7 transparent: you can see through it, like glass
8. *8 doctoral studies: the highest level of study at a university