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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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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?
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.
"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.
Some detailed links on how it works
p
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
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telly
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.
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.
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.
. . . masturbate even more than you already do?
Here's what you want, a camera that sees through clothes . Sheesh...
Circumcision is child abuse.
...to make it clickable.
e s.asp
http://www.iatia.com.au/technology/insideQpi.asp
http://www.iatia.com.au/technology/applicationNot
Probably because it's easier for him to get moner for his research from the military. Many things we use as consumers everyday were started by the military.
GPS, Radar, heck even the microwave (though that was more the British military.
Hope they can't make this work for speed cameras...
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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
Actually it doesn't seem like they're using parallax, though that's what I first thought as well. I think it actually has to do with the fact that all transparent or semi-transparent substances change the phase of light passing through them.
As far as I can tell, the three images are taken slightly out of focus from each other. One is in focus, and the other two are positively and negatively defocused.
You then use fourier analysis to take the difference in phase of the images viewed from the three lenses and produce a "cleaned up" image where as much of the stuff that is shifting the light frequency is removed.
No? Then I'm not interested. ;P
... now I can stop feeling guilty for turning off fog of war in games!
Who are you to say "we dont need this"? You can forsee all applications of a technology before its made? And you automatically assume just because the money is initially military its going to be used to "kill people"? What nonsense.
This would useful for finding people in a burning building full of smoke. Or imagine putting it onto a car as a warning system in heavy fog that you're approaching an obstacle too fast. Same with planes. Surely more creative people than I can dream up a dozen applications for this.
Here's a tip about research: The military has a ton of money, and they spend it on all kinds of things that have nothing to do with "killing people". As pointed out already, the internet was a defense project. So was GPS. So was radar. So was a million other extremely useful things.
"We dont need this" - we don't need you and your cluelessness.
-
Around these parts, it works the other way around... things are legal until they're illegal. Who shouldn't be allowed to use it?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
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.
Notice also that with technology like this, when they do kill people, they kill fewer people, because they know exactly where to put the bombs and can use smaller bombs that only blow up the target. Compare the average World War II carpet bombing campaign with a modern-day strike using a "smart bomb" or missle of some sort.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
...you think they'd be doing it if it didn't work? The military may waste money on a lot of things, but not terribly often, and reports normally aren't done on unworking devices.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I live in Oregon, and one of our local news crews was one of the first to get the FLIR cameras when they were brand new for their News Choppers (IIRC the station was KATU). The camera even saved peoples lives during a fire in Portland.
I don't necessarily see how this camera can be a major privacy threat. I do see it being lifesaver.
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
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
Ummm...
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.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Easy: those who can afford it are allowed to use it. If news crews care enough about a story to shell out for it, they've got it. If your local council cares enough about saving your life your local fire truck gets one.
Yeah, nothing that was ever funded by military research has ever come to any good for society.
Well, except for computers and the internet. Everything else was crap. And I guess those satellites that let us talk all over the world and get sports and softcore porn beamed into our house are pretty neat too, except for the lite beer ads. And did I mention the GPS I've got on my cell phone?
Yeah, military research is a total dead end.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
Tin foil, of course.
English is easier said than done.
Except that has nothing to do with how the these cameras work, which is not by relying on individual particles moving out of the way to give a clear view of different parts of the image, but rather by reconstructing the image from phase contrast.
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.
Actually is different, if you read the two article, you'll notice a major differences.
The one you stated is an infrared camera. Which means its only good at seeing objects that give off an appreciative amount of infrared radiation (in this case, runway lights, other planes, and etc).
The one stated in the main post is completely optical. It merely take three consecutive image and a computer compare the images and extract objects that are obscured by fog, dust, and such. Of course, this system would require that SOME visibility exist (in another word, no seeing through solid walls).
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
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.
That's not very hard to do at all. And it's nothing like what this camera is doing.
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...
You brought up some good points. I'm just playing the Devil's advocate here...just for sake of discussion:
This would useful for finding people in a burning building full of smoke... and once the targets have been acquired, neutralize them.
Or imagine putting it onto a car as a warning system in heavy fog that you're approaching an obstacle too fast... or taking advantage of a dust storm and locating the enemy before he can locate you.
Same with planes... same reason, faster visual target acquisition is an advantage.
the internet was a defense project... that could allow us to maintain communication after a nuclear strike which is necessary if orders for a counter-strike are no be disemminated
So was GPS... to guide precision munitions to targets to increase kill ratios
So was radar... to detect any and all potential aerial and sea going enemy targets
"We dont need this" - we don't need you and your cluelessness... nor your innocence.
Just wanted let you know that there is always a way technology can be used by the military that is related to killing people. Especially if the military is involved in it's development.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
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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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...
I think you're confusing SNL with Randy and Jason Sklar's standup routine.
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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!
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?
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
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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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
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
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
Not to mention junk like RADAR preventing a Nazi invasion of Britian. That sucked!
Or, to every point that you make, there are defensive as opposed to offensive purposes. We can go round and round. The point I want to make is that there are BOTH uses. In other words, all of these technologies are neutral; it depends on the person using them.
Also, the military, itself is neutral and not inherently bad. Again, it is a false assumption that "military" == "evil". What about defense, peace keeping, rebulding, policing, and rescue operations, which are FAR more common uses of the military? What about defending other nations who ask for help from outside aggression? What about helping governments stop drug trafficing? (Those uses heavily consume military technology, BTW.)
Point by point -
This would useful for finding people in a burning building full of smoke... and once the targets have been acquired, neutralize them. Or, save military personnel and civilians.
Or imagine putting it onto a car as a warning system in heavy fog that you're approaching an obstacle too fast... or taking advantage of a dust storm and locating the enemy before he can locate you. Or, keep your troops and the Red Cross out of harm's way during a rescue operation.
Same with planes... same reason, faster visual target acquisition is an advantage. Same with planes...
the internet was a defense project... that could allow us to maintain communication after a nuclear strike which is necessary if orders for a counter-strike are no be disemminated How is this necessarily an OFFENSIVE activity? (You are making an assumption or two, here....)
So was GPS... to guide precision munitions to targets to increase kill ratios Can you find military units, rescue-people-on-the-ground uses?
So was radar... to detect any and all potential aerial and sea going enemy targets Wrong!!! This was a DEFENSIVE application, during World War II, developed by the British, who were being ATTACKED by the Germans. This should have saved lives during the Pearl Harbor attack by the Japanese, in present-day Hawaii, but the RADAR was IGNORED, even though it saw them. Of course, it was turned into a defensive/offensive technology.
"We dont need this" - we don't need you and your cluelessness... nor your innocence. Why do you naively assume that "war" == "bad"? Why do you assume that "military" == "bad"? Why do you assume that "military tech" == "bad"? This is illogical in the extreme. You should not assume that it is either good or bad; only the use is good or bad.
For example, in World War II, both the German Alliance and the Japanese were in the wrong (a fact, definitely not an opinion); a coalition of Allies stopped them, instead of giving into them. America found out the hard way that being a pacifist nation (actual Presidential campaign statement: "He kept us out of the War"), allows tyrants to steam-roll their way into power and kill very large numbers of people. It is not only dangerous and naive -- it is also cruel and wrong to allow this to go unchecked. Hence, militaries, military power and military technology can be either good or bad. Don't assume. Look at the military, the leaders, and the objectives. Even there, you should not have the assumption of guilt...
Just wanted let you know that there is always a way technology can be used by the military that is related to killing people. Especially if the military is involved in it's development.
The above statement can, of course, be true, as can its converse: "Just wanted let you know that there is always a way technology can be used by the military that is life-saving."
However, there is an implied assumtion in your statements that military technology is evil. This is extremely faulty reasoning: "Straw-Man Arguments," "begging the question," "red herrings," "ad-hominem attack" to name just a few.
If you buy into this, you probably also
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
OK, I'll assume you're from Australia (where the article was posted from), where your statement might be true, or very young. In the good old USA, however, the military is always touting (and throwing dollars after) some new fangled technology that just plain doesn't work. Remember Star Wars? That brought about some fine basic research, but none of the technology ever matured into something that would actually work. Remember that darn tilt-rotor helicopter (I think it was called the Osprey?) that kept crashing with Marines in it? That product made it all the way through development, testing, and limited deployment before Congress finally pulled the plug. The reason was because it didn't work! That was a 40 billion dollar program. Star Wars was likely 100 billion. Sorry, but in the USA, the military does waste money on "unworking devices."
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
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.
Such uses will be found by someone. People manage to kill with baseball bats, steak knives, phone cords, broken bottles, etc.
The question is who will find such a use first, and in particular who will find a use that provides overwhelming advantage first.
And last, some people need to be killed. Not willy-nilly, not widespread, not whoever I don't like, but there are people in this world who need to be stopped dead in their tracks before they rape, pillage, and destroy to their hearts' content.
They're active devices, though, and the military prefers passives. Active sensors make you a target.
Yes he is. I belive this is the routine where they say chopper four just whipped news chopper nine's ass, or something to that extent.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
Holy Cow.
mikehoskins, slow down there. You read too far into my post and shot way past the scope of my counter points. See the top of my post, the part where I said I was just playing the "Devil's advocate"? I'm not trying to be a smart ass when I ask this, but, you do know what that means, right?
Authority questions you. Return the favor.