A new nanoassembly technique could make chameleon-like camouflage possible.

By using specially-designed proteins as nanomotors, Sandia National Laboratory researchers have created a system that can assemble quantum dots into bright, fluorescent rings. In this video, you can watch the formation of those rings, which are about five microns across, less than a tenth of the width of a human hair.
If these quantum dots were embedded on the surface of an object, the formation of the rings would cause the object to change color to the naked eye. Reverse the process and the color would change back. That raises the possibility of fast color changes of the sort that some animals use to blend in with their environments.
“Camouflage outfits that blend with a variety of environments without need of an outside power source — say, blue when at sea and then brown in a desert environment — is where this work could eventually lead,” George Bachand, the principal investigator at Sandia said in a press release.
But that’s probably a decade or more away, Bachand said.