See All That You Can See

Technology used to camouflage tanks on the battlefield is being thrown into reverse by the auto industry--to prevent crashes by making cars easier to spot.

Engineers from General Motors Corp. and the Army will work with sophisticated military research of human perception of colors and shapes.

The Army’s engineering center in Warren, Mich., is building a “visual perception lab” where people will watch traffic simulations and tell which vehicles are most noticeable.

“It’s got something to do with how cars and their lights blend into the background clutter,” Army physicist Tom Meitzler says. “We can essentially flip the model and have it calculate what makes particular vehicles more conspicuous or simpler to see.”