Forget Harry Potter's cloak, a British company claim to have made a real-life invisibility shield.

London-based Invisibility Shield Co. say the fully functional shields can hide a whole person.

The firm explains the innovation uses a precision engineered lens array to direct much of the light reflected from the subject away from the observer. This sends it sideways across the face of the shield to the left and right.

From the observer's perspective, background light is effectively smeared horizontally across the front face of the shield, over the area where the subject would ordinarily be seen.

Invisibility Shield Co. say, "The shields perform at their absolute best against uniform backgrounds such as foliage, grass, rendered walls, sand, sky, and asphalt.

"Backgrounds with defined horizontal lines work really well too and these can be natural features such as the horizon or man-made features like walls, rails, or painted lines."

The makers are offering a small shield (310 x 210mm) to hide 'everyday items for £49 ($64).

There is also a full-size 950 x 650mm version that can hide a person. Estimated delivery is expected by December.

Currently, 25 shields have been developed, and the team is funding on Kickstarter to ramp-up capacity to develop more.

They explain, "Disappointed by the lack of progress and the continued unavailability of actual working invisibility shields, we decided to step things up and go all in on our project to create one.

"We went through countless iterations, tested a lot of materials, and experienced a lot of failure.

"But along the way, we managed to develop a reliable, scalable, and efficient manufacturing process and created what we believe are the best invisibility shields ever made."

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