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Camera that Sees through Smoke and Fog Underway
tomschuring writes "The Age has a story about IATIA, who have been given $2.7 million by the Defence Department to fund development of a military spy camera capable of seeing through fog, smoke and dust storms. The technology uses a highly sophisticated camera that captures three images simultaneously through a single lens. Images thus resolved from between the particles making up fog, smoke, and dust storms are formed into a single picture of the hidden target."
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big deal i already see through smoke and fog, i just turn the sprites down
if it can what it says, there will be many other uses for this little camera; no doubt coming soon to a cellphone, I'm sure...
Anyone seen my jagged little pill?
Will this technology allow me to see through fog in OpenGL videogames? Your thoughts?
Chopper 4 can see through fog! ...yeah, I'm probably the only one who remembers that awful SNL sketch. Nevermind.
how dense can the fog particles be? this camera would have to have an extremely large resolution to do this kind of thing. anyone have any specs on this?
the uses for this are endless, eg, if the technology becomes cheap enough, we can have this in cars to help driving during foggy weather.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
I want one adapted to take three simultaenous pictures from a single lens, which can then resolve between the fibers in women's clothing, which will then allow me to -- you know.
"that captures three images simultaneously through a single lens." There is also a Kodak version, where one set of pictures is lost, another is misdeveloped, and the third is inadvertently sent to your ex with the same middle initial.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
but can it see through shirts?
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Some detailed links on how it works
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o te s.asp
http://www.iatia.com.au/technology/insideQpi.as
http://www.iatia.com.au/technology/applicationN
he algorithm has a number of key advantages, including:
* Returns phase and intensity information independently
* Provides quantitative, absolute phase (with DC offset)
* Is a rapid, stable, non-iterative solution
* Works with non-uniform and partically coherent illumination
* Offers relaxed beam conditioning
* Solves the twin image problem of holography
* Has been experimentally applied to a number of radiations
You can find their list of patents on theire site. Digging into these should give you more detail.
I don't care I am going on holidays for 3 weeks in 3hours
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
Just in time for politics.slashdot.org!
telly
This will be great for sneaking pics of steamy foggy highschool girl's washrooms.
The technology uses a highly sophisticated camera that captures three images simultaneously through a single lens
Unfortunately the image cannot be viewed without Red+Blue 3D glasses.
Worthwhile. So I dying. All major more. If you feel Theorists - Culture of abuse Whatever path is Arrogance was
These guys at stanford have done some really amazing stuff that's directly related. Except that they has literally dozens of cameras (as seen in their ppt), and their research seems to concentrate on multifocal image reconstruction (see ppt slides, presentation is quite good)
Link (has cool results links)
Hmm, Keith Nugent is fairly well known in some niche areas of optics. If I remember right, his initial work on the use of x-rays and the like to compensate for normal visible hindrances were met with some opposition, but he is quite famous otherwise.
That was because, ironically, this was developed as a method to visualize biological stuff, and some felt that his methods would not quite be suitable for such a task. His ideas were to use various parameters such as phase, intensity and angle of vision to extract information which could be correlated and converge to recreate images with minimal amount of information, which later gained acceptance.
I guess he developed on that technique, and later on evolved to have the military to take notice. Interesting neverthless.
a Beowulf clust ... er, nevermind ;)
So they are using the principle of parallax. It's like how we can hold our finger infront of our face and still get a complete picture; the parts that are blocked on one eye are completed by the other. Though with fog, it would seem to me that since there are so many particles for the light to go through, even if you had 3 cameras looking from different places, they would still get a foggy picture. It would be like trying to look through a forest.
So, is this a good thing or a bad thing?
Of course, the answer is, It depends on what it's used for. What it's used for depends on them who use it. This raises the question, Who should be allowed to use it?
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
It won't work but I bet it will cost a ton of money. LOL. I bet some CIA analyst will use it from a spy satelite to look in on a nudist beach.
All kidding aside, this is kinda sad. This kind of research could be much more useful for space exploration than for finding ways to kill more people. This professor seems bright, why not find something new instead of working for the military??
Come and say hi. http://forum.penpals.com/index.php
This tech isn't new. It is the same as was used to make the movie 405 which is freely available for download online. In this short film they pointed a camera on top of a bridge overlooking the highway and took several frames and then spliced them all together so that they could have footage of the highway that looked like there were no cars on it. This is the same idea being used with these glasses, only in real time.
Much is left to the imagination in the article
I am imagining that since it not possible to "see" "through" an object, that these three images must be of various wavelengths (visible light, ultraviolet light, and infrared) and then are run through an interpolation process to get a probable image of what is behind the obstacle.
Am I out to lunch? Can anybody shed more light on how this works?
I was recently thinking about a technique which might be used for creating high definition stills of television programs.
The principle goes like this: you can get a view of an entire room with only a slit to look through. All you need to do is move back and forth to get the extra details.
So with the TV stills, you let the camera pan around a bit on a subject and capture all of the detail for each distinct area of the picture (eyes, whatever) since each of the raster lines on the tv are like the slit through the door. The camera panning around is like moving back and forth.
So under the right conditions like I've described, all the detail you want is there, but only when you take all the frames into consideration.
Here's what you want, a camera that sees through clothes . Sheesh...
Circumcision is child abuse.
Doesn't NASA already have one of these installed on the Cassini spacecraft?
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...to make it clickable.
e s.asp
http://www.iatia.com.au/technology/insideQpi.asp
http://www.iatia.com.au/technology/applicationNot
what about smoke and mirrors?
Hope they can't make this work for speed cameras...
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It sounds like this would be an absolute godsend for aircraft.
Wake me when journalists have a camera that can see through the fog of war, where the first casualty is the truth.
--
make install -not war
No? Then I'm not interested. ;P
... now I can stop feeling guilty for turning off fog of war in games!
Well seeing through Smoke, fog dust, amd such is nice and all, but when are they going to invent something that will REALLY benefit humanity?
You know, like a camera that sees through girl's clothing...
Er, I mean, like cure cancer!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
By Garry Barker
The Age Technology Editor
September 24, 2004
A Melbourne company rated a world leader in advanced phase imaging technology has been given $2.7 million by the Defence Department to fund development of a military spy camera capable of seeing through fog, smoke and dust storms.
Iatia Ltd, based in Box Hill, has commercialised technology developed at the University of Melbourne by a team of physicists led by Professor Keith Nugent that promises ultimately to let defence forces "see" stealth bombers and other targets invisible to conventional radar.
"The technology is still experimental, but we know it works," said Iatia chief executive Brian Powell. Further research and field trials done in conjunction with engineers at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation at Salisbury in South Australia will now be carried out to develop an operational camera capable of working over a range of about a kilometre.
Initially, Iatia had used Professor Nugent's discoveries in microscopes to detect things such as cracks in gas turbine blades and to study Natalie Portman's nipples and other human tissue samples.
"But then we thought, why not use it in cameras, or telescopes, and that excited the interest of the Defence Department," Mr Powell said.
"They saw it could be used by troops on the ground or from helicopters to see through trees and cloud."
The technology uses a highly sophisticated camera that captures three images simultaneously through a single lens. Images thus resolved from between the particles making up fog, smoke, and dust storms are formed into a single picture of the hidden target.
Iatia chairman Jim Short said the company's application for funding under the Government's Capability and Technology Demonstrator program had been supported by the Australian Army and the Royal Australian Navy.
They saw potential for the development of passive surveillance, allowing troops to distinguish between camouflaged targets and vegetation and to see otherwise hidden objects such as tanks and soldiers.
The technology, called Quantitative Phase Imaging also had commercial application in industry, science and medicine, Mr Short said.
Warning: This site has gone out of business. You'll have to look for your fun elsewere (you hope).
I was in the US Navy from 1994-1996 and the damage control teams already have a special camera (forget what it is called) that can see through dense smoke (the type you would expect from a jet fuel fire or amunition fire on a ship) and help you to see clearly through the smoke.
Wonder what makes the camera in this article so different from the technology the Navy already uses... I'm sure the current navy breed is much more advanced than it was 10 years ago.
Thanks,
Leabre
"The technology uses a highly sophisticated camera that captures three images simultaneously through a single lens. Images thus resolved from between the particles making up fog, smoke, and dust storms are formed into a single picture of the hidden target."
If it uses the concept of parallax, how can it possibly do this both using the same lense AND at the same time? Isn't parallax based on the concept of different images of overlapping fields of view? IR: two or more eyes/lenses or two or more images slightly timed apart if the object(s) in the foreground are moving?
If it's based on image analysis using different algorythms for three copies of the same original image, wouldn't it be liable to have errors? (Think of those optical illusions of inverted masks...) Or is the third one used to reduce/remove these errors?
"You know, like a camera that sees through girl's clothing... "
You know what? Now I think I see why all you guys don't have dates. You're scaring them all away. See through clothing indeed.
Typically, you would feed live video into this, and it may integrate several hundred, maybe thousands of frames of incredibly obscure images, and return stills of very high resolution.
It was used by police detective units to analyze poor video files recorded by instore video recorders that saw a crime.
It looks like this may be useful for this kind of thing, as the DSP can be programmed to kill off the haze and just leave what comes through now and then as the fog particles drift in and out of the lines of sight.
Has anybody else seen this? And have any links?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
This may also have medical applications in terms of optical imaging - see through the patient (arms and legs only, probably). Shine a bright light at the patient. Capture the ealiest photos that emerge (the ones that had a direct path to the camera). Ignore slow photons (ones that were absorbed and release or bounced around). Voila, instant imaging without x-rays. IIRC, this was in development years ago.
...OGC corporation.
I for one welcome our all seeing overlords.
How am I going to hide from the government if I can't be discretely nestled behind dust and fog?
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-2afe88f04-c02795f8 ea-3bf4e5f305 a cd-f1903b6824 a 44-fd0a684b89 6 bf-f7a05deebc e 6f-098a1e5d0a 6 52-13373d661f
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-2afe88f04-280687c
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-2afe88f04-0e283b2
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-2afe88f04-7df6f1d
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-2afe88f04-162fb46
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-2afe88f04-0b939d1
Just use an uncooled microbolometer-based infrared thermal imager. BAE Systems has been producing these for years. They're low-power, lightweight, and efficient.
When receiving this wavelength of IR, you can see through smoke, fog, some plastics (regardless of opacity to visible light), and independent of visible light levels. And seeing radiated heat is, of course, an obvious benefit. A fraction of a degree F is all that's needed to note a difference -- you can even see where things used to be because of the heat shadow they leave.
--Colin
Disclaimer: I work for the company that makes these.
All correct however it's still sad that what brings out the best in people is also the worst. And in answer to "You can forsee all applications of a technology before its made? ". One doesn't have to be clarivoyant when it comes to humanity. Merely observant.
MOD PARENT DOWN, he'll kill us all
Am I the only one who has read "underway" as "uderwear"?
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I wonder what we'd see if we flew a device of this type over a gas giant, such as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune (or Michael Moore).
... that'd be something rare. And good.
Military equipment changed for scientific use
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.
Dick Cheney's secret Energy group (who are the members)
CIA - Tenet's "slam dunk" intelligence source on Iraq's WMD (who fabricated that intelligence - afterall, it wasn't real)
White House - who outed the CIA agent
FBI & John Ashcroft - why is Sibel Edmond's testimony being "re-classified" after 2 years of being in public domain
Halliburton - wait, maybe we shouldn't. We don't want to break the camera...
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
Every day for the last six months.
Where's my spy camera?
Where's my spy camera?
Where's my spy camera?
Here's your stupid spy camera!
Game... blouses.
Sounds like vaporware to me!
...development of a military spy camera capable of seeing through fog, smoke and dust storms. If it's able to do this in real-time (which I assume) then they should make it part of the standard equipment for firefighters, since it'd be very handy when someone were trapped inside a smoke filled building.
In college my clinic team worked with Northrop Electronic Systems on their OASys project, or Obstacle Avoidance System. It was a laser + computer navigation system that would scan the horizon through smoke or other aerosols and generate a "safe passage" navigation image to the helicopter pilot using it. Supposedly it worked pretty well (they were still working on it after our 9 months on our piece of the project). It was basically a rotating laser optics assembly that would trace a cone in space, and the assembly would scan in the horizontal plane to yield the losenge shape (they used that term).
Here's a funny little twist. When we went to the site to visit the developers of the project at Northrop, we stopped off in a meeting room that had on one of the walls a poster for the OASys project, featuring a helicopter with a losenge-shaped window of visibility depicted against some trees with some smoke and other debris in the air.
Nearby on the same wall was another poster for a weapon system, the name of which escapes me. It was the same poster, but in the middle of the losenge-shaped window of visibility was a little gunsight, and I think the helecopter had some weapons slung.
We asked our liason person whether the two projects were related, and he assured us they were completely different as we were brought to another area.
Our professor on the project was a Yugoslavian National, and this was in 1992, so you can imagine how fun the rest of our visit was when they found that out....
Now here are my questions bc I didn't rtfa:
Will it be able to see through a gas that completely blocks whats on the other side, such as a thick clouds in the sky?
Will it be able to see through frosted glass and the like?
Neil is that you? Yeah yeah, it's me... Neil...
How long until I can get one of these for my car? If the picture quality is good enough, you could go 70mph through the fog no matter how thick it is. Even if it's not that good, it would make driving a little safer in the desert, where dust storms can come up suddenly with no warning (ever driven through AZ or NM? There's warning signs everywhere about dust storms).
Of course, it will be on the expensive luxury cars first, and it will be another 10-15 years before it shows up on the Civics and Kias.
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So, when this hits the cinemas, you can't bootleg movies anymore? Gee, that's one clever anti-piracy move.
1. Car in fog. It would be nice to have a heads up display on my winshield, kind of like Cadillac did with night vision some years ago... Whatever happened to that anyway?
2. Airplanes! No more grounding because of fog.
Shouldn't that be: Image Analysis Software/Technology that Sees through Smoke and Fog Underway it uses 3 cameras
--- to swing on the spiral...
Hey, I'm on Chopper Four! I can see through fog!
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
so when I must go to some team meeting I would be able to see better what they really want from me.
"What crap do you want to ear today?"
Sorry for the typo. Of course it should be: Am I the only one who has read "underway" as "underwear." Really, skimming through the headlines I looked at it for an instant, read something else and after a while I thought: "What? Camera that Sees through Undewear? That might be an interesting hardware to spend the grants on!" Imagine my disappointment when I scrolled back to read the article...
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
..that rids them of the last excuse for not finding WMD..
http://efil.blogspot.com/
Turn fog of war off
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Sure, it might help the military fight more effectively and lead to more decisive victories. On the other hand, they then have to put up with all the incessant whining from their enemies about fog hacks. Is it really worth it?
I shudder at the thought of IATIA developing a real-world wall-hack. *shudder* See?
bomb first check target attitude going on at the moment, this is going to come in very useful. they've got to see through the piles of burning rubble somehow to find out whether they hit a terrorist, or made a boo boo.
This sounds cool and all - but one that can see through bullshit would be infinitely more useful...
Black holes are where God divided by zero
The headline was okay, but the summary maybe oughta have pointed out that it's the *Oz* DD they are talking about.
I mean, I mistook it for the Lithuanian Defense Department.
A laser guidied targeting system that can see through the burning tire-piles of Somalia, the sand storms and Hookah pipes of the Mideast, and the mud huts in North Korea.
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Early prototypes have yielded high success rates in pinpointing the exact whereabouts of a Will Smith, and the photographs were detailed enough to show that he was carrying a shopping bag.
Quick, ship this sucker to the Utah District Court, attention Judge Dale Kimball.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
we have a US government agency in charge of ridding the world of fences? no wonder taxes are so high... its Defense... say it with me... spell check...
ok.. so heads you lose tails I win. right?
But, will it see through clothes? That's really the key thing (subject mis-spelling intentional)
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
Go buy a Caddilac that already has it on it (nightvision). The Japanese cars may catch up to GM's offering in 5 years, maybe.
All you need to see through smoke or fog is a few extra OpenGL commands. It's not limited to just fog/dust either, you can even snipe through walls!
paintball
I worked on a prototype to this 20 years ago at an American University, not far from Washington DC. Computer vision. We developed it for tanks. A derivitive can be found on GM's Cadillac called night vision. That is a very good implementation for the price. The military one is very expensive, it is also a lot better than the one Cadillac has. Also, it allows you to see right through dresses/skirts in certain light and material. Not that we would do such a thing (wolf whistle).
How about a camera that sees through the fog of war?
that the terahertz cameras which were also being developped, while being capable of filming through walls, are not good for fog, smoke and dust?
This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder about /. The parent comment isn't Stupid, but it's hardly insightful. Give him a 2 for effort, but don't elevate it to the top of the conversation.
"Just wanted let you know that there is always a way technology can be used by the military that is related to killing people." That is the sum total of d474's insight.
Also, his insinuation that the grandparent poster is a Panglossian innocent is unfounded.
It's called Side Aperture Radar (SAR). It's used to get images through the clouds of Venus, etc.
What's the fascination with the VISIBLE spectrum, anyways?
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
It's beyond belief that they would get so much money to make a camera to do what amounts to one of the most simple image processing techniques known. I work in image processing. 2.7 million for a principal component analysis..?? Get real. That's like a 5 minute operation with your garden variety digital camera and off the rack software. Where do I sign up for funding? I have algorithms that would kick that things ass, *AND* those algos are 5-10 years old now. Big deal. They must be someones cousin.
Wow, if this thing sees through smoke and fog, maybe we could point it at our presidential candidates and get a picture of what they're really saying!
They have the "z-motion nano-positioner"!! Which is apparently quite useful http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=z-mo tion+nano-positioner&btnG=Google+Search
Well, I have been working in and around the Air Force for about ten years, and this is really nothing new (at least on the airborne side). Look up ASARS (Advanced Synthetic Aperature Radar) or SYERS (Senior Year Electro Optical Reconaissance System).
Why not just type "black sheep wall" or "IseeDeadPeople ". It fixed my fog issues everytime I'm in a war.
Sounds like this would be very useful for flights landing in the San Francisco airport, which is so often plagued by fog.
This technology sounds similar to how they restored the Star Wars films. I wonder if we'll see realtime versions of this technology one day, where you can put on a pair of glasses and see instantly through fog and dust.
There are a number of manufactures that make them for fire department use already. Check out a link here:
a tegoryPage.cfm?MajCatCodeParam=55&MinCatCodeParam= 110
http://buyersguide.firehouse.com/buyersguide/Subc
The above link is a listing of various manufactures. I can attest that my former fire department used (and loved) the ISG cameras. Very stable, long battery life, and the video transmitter was great for training and live fire fighting purposes.
I applaud this technology as a great achievment!
think before you write, it'll save me moderator points.
Technology demonstrated by a university student for probably a fraction of that: http://www.dgraham.dsl.pipex.com/dmist/home.html
They're active devices, though, and the military prefers passives. Active sensors make you a target.
wasn't there some phased array satelite system (called lacrosse or something) that was supposed to give all weather imaging? the resolution was lower than cameras, but was sufficient to see things like tanks and jeeps and such...
Does it also see through vapourware?
My Karma is so low that even my own postings are beyond my current threshold