Students Revolutionize Army Vehicle Camouflage With Ingenious Invention

University of Florida and Georgia Tech engineering students developed a vehicle camouflage system for the U.S. Army, enhancing camouflage speed and safety, and demonstrating the potential of academic-military collaboration to solve practical defense challenges.

What began as a class project for senior engineering students at the University of Florida evolved into a practical solution for soldiers, providing them with a quicker, easier, and safer method to camouflage their vehicles on the battlefield.

Students from Matthew J. Traum’s mechanical engineering capstone course received real-world training last year when they partnered with peers at Georgia Institute of Technology and the Civil-Military Innovation Institute, or CMI2, to design and produce a vehicle camouflage deployer for the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia.

“This was a successful collaboration that tackled a problem faced by soldiers in the field — and much more rapidly than the Army’s conventional process,” said Traum, Ph.D., an instructional associate professor in the UF Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.