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"Shimmer Vision" Scopes See Better Using Heat
holy_calamity writes "New Scientist reports on a neat DARPA idea that uses the shimmer of heat haze to allow binoculars to see further. It works by exploiting the fact that some distortions from heat haze actually magnify objects behind them. The binoculars collect a series of frames when that is occurring to boost magnification by 3 times. The design goal is to be able to present one image a second, and to enable facial recognition at 90% accuracy at a distance of 1 km. The scopes could be on the battlefield inside of 3 years."
...I could never figure out why every sci-fi show has super-advanced computerized binoculars, even when they can't seem to do anything but enlarge an image (and show numbers and blinking lights).
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Seems like everything will be on the battlefield inside of 3 years. Read as project will be dropped inside of 3 years after soaking up 3 years worth of government investing.
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
While military technology has been one of the primary leaders of general technology for thousands of years, it would be nice if there could be more non-military leaps.
Could this technique be used for general astronamy as well, making use of temporary increases in gravitational lensing? I know that gravitational lensing is being made use of, but I bet there are fluctuations that have, until now, been seen only as a limitation.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
I guess this rules out a sneak invasion of Antarctica!
"The scopes could be on the battlefield inside of 3 years."
"and to enable facial recognition at 90% accuracy at a distance of 1 km."
Who cares. Marines have been killing folks at 1 km for a long time using scopes about the same size. Who needs facial recognition when you already know the target?
Does it magnify by 10x if there's some hot grits ahead?
welcome our heat vision overlords.
This is the same principle used in noise cancellation filters. Except that they are extracting information from the distortion instead of dropping it. You can take the average of a signal with distortion and assume that the distortion is random, and throw out the random seeming bits of it. This aims to save the random stuff, and try to find a pattern within it (such as a face), then it probably uses that to enhance the real-time pixels.
I think there was a story on here about using still photos to enhance digital movies. The principle is probably the same, only the "still photo" is replaced by stuff that's inferred to be noise, but good noise (and possibly processed with a face algo).
No reason why you couldn't do this with radio also, they probably already do.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
There was an article on the BBC about a similar method like this this last year.
A new method of looking at stars in the sky through cloud cover; it actually takes several pictures, and combines the best parts of each picture to form one clear picture. Allows telescopes to increase their sharpness many fold. The professor in the news story actually gives an example of a heat haze, coincidentally enough (or not)!
But this looks like a step up from what's in that article. They're taking the best magnified parts of the picture.
Farther refers to distance. Further refers to degree.
Wouldn't that mean the binoculars are only useful in the desert? Nice to see the US is really working hard to get troops out of the middle-east.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
The fact your argument is posted on Slashdot would kind of be self-defeating would it not?
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
The design goal is to be able to present one image a second, and to enable facial recognition at 90% accuracy at a distance of 1 km. The scopes could be on the battlefield inside of 3 years."
Nothin' like sniping a long-range moving target with a full second of lag!
Travel to interesting hot deserts, meet interesting people and kill them from a great distance.
Be all you can be with technology!
I know the military has provided us with all kinds of great tech, but it's a shame that we have to kill people.
This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen... --Hobbes
The article has a broken link to the original technical presentation. Try this: http://www.iol.umd.edu/Presentations/slideshow.php?id=54
The results here are very interesting. This is different -- and harder -- than the adaptive optics used in ground-based astronomy because the distorting medium is thick, extending all the way to the object being observed. What this implies is that the wavefront distortion isn't uniform across the entire image. So they pick out regions of good (sharp) seeing from each frame, then stitch them together to produce an entire sharp frame. They'll need a fairly fast image processor in those binoculars.
Got to admit, but it's amazing to think that what would normally be a hindrance "the shimmering in the heat" could become an asset. It's like the saying "when life throws you lemons, make lemonade!" :) This will be good for anyone trekking into the desert, having to find things or people. Pretty cool news! :)
TFA and the links I followed from it were clear that they were taking advantage of some kind of extra magnification due to serendipitous atmospheric lensing. The articles could be full of bs though.
My students do an experiment where they use a one bit a/d converter (ie. a comparator) to extract a signal from noise. If they can average long enough they can pull a sine wave out from under 20 db of noise.
We have an inspection microscope that has a dimpled rotating disk that introduces noise into the image. In this case, the human eye and brain are used as the averager. While I can't say the resolution exceeds the diffraction limit, one can easily see the improvement when the noise is added.
Miss Lippenreider,
take over the goggles.
Thank you for your amazing insight, Captain.
I thought one of the first obvious things to implement is Image Stabilisation. I find that one of the biggest drawbacks of binoculars is that the image shakes so much at high "magnifications".
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
I nominate you for most obvious comment of the day! Congratulations!
It just pisses me off when so many are excited they find better ways to kill other people..
Wow, what sort of bad-ass binoculars are you envisioning? I was thinking they'd just provide a clearer image of distant objects...
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
This sounds an awful lot like the technology behind the "lucky" telescope". The basic idea, at least, is similar: Take the clearest images obtained over several samples and composite it into an image that otherwise couldn't be obtained given the distortion field.
This should work great for relatively stationary things. For moving objects, I imagine the effectiveness would be greatly diminished.
Thoughts?
Program Intellivision!
Eh, how about not dumping arsenic in the water ? You think that'd work ? Eh, first things first, get the freakin' cattle and rats OUT OF THE STREETS and into the sewers where they belong !
5-10 years from now you will see a story on slashdot talking about this same technology being used by unmanned flying cameras that "The Man" will use to spy on you.
From very far away somewhere in that "big bad world out beyond the server room".
That is if there IS slashdot in 5-10 years any more.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I find it very optimistic expecting even drunk Russians to just spontaneously set up a barbecue in the middle of the battle filed, in freezing cold.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
... and to enable facial recognition at 90% accuracy at a distance of 1 km. ... and, on a 10, get mistaken for a terrorist and executed from 1 km away.
This is nothing. CSI manage magnification way better than this every week. I think it is achieved through the combined technology of inadequately lit laboratories and music by The Who.
The muzzle velocity of such a rifle seems to be about 1 kilometer per second (M16 rifle), and also there's the one-per-second frame rate, so this scope seems best suited to assassinations, where your target is out in the open and stationary.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
Too bad Korea has a cold climate.
"War has resulted in more technological breakthroughs and advances than any other single cause in the history of man. From stones to nukes."
The space program has developed more.
This is not a new idea (surprise, surprise). Just google for "lucky imaging" and you'll see how a lot of work has been done in the astronomical community to grab a lot of short exposure images and stitch together information from the images that were "lucky" in the sense that atmospheric effects did not degrade (or even enhanced) image quality.
What will prove to be interesting is whether or not astronomers feel the need to put telescopes in to space (for large $) given that ground-based astronomy is becoming more prevalent now that atmospheric distortions are not only correctable, but useful.
Its a dessert topping AND and floor wax AND military grade privacy cracking snoop scope!
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/75/75ishimmer.phtml
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
A scope capable of facial recognition at 1km is useful for much more than just targeting to kill, because it helps you work out who a person is, an activity commonly associated with performing surveillance. There are some other military applications too, which I'll leave to your imagination.
Scroogle
You don't need facial recognition on a battlefield. This isn't going to be pointed at our enemies. This is going to pointed at us. Your tin foil hat won't help. It's too late.
If you look at it, sex and pr0n have always been even bigger motors of technological advance.
And compared to war, they have the advantage of killing slightly less people.
(Come to think of Religion has probably played an important role in advances too - but saddly it has also often led to wars or worse in human history)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It's my firm belief that that's how they can read license plates from outer space.
--Mike--
the ultimate "vaporware". At least when used on water.
This space up for sale.
Got to admit, but it's amazing to think that what would normally be a hindrance "the shimmering in the heat" could become an asset.
OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Modulation) schemes (which include WiFi and WiMax) do the same thing with multipath interference: Take advantage of the extra signal brought in by the multiple paths and add it all up to improve the signal-to-noise ratio.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Anyone know how I can block these Military type topics from my Slashdot view? It appears under the technology section which I don't want to block as a whole.
If there is no way and someone of power is reading this, do you think the military topics could be moved to their own section. The slashdot of old rarely had such articles whereas they seem to becoming more and more common these days. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is not interested in the US military's latest and greatest tools to maim and kill.
...will this technology also work to overcome block glass windows?
People might have to reconsider what level of visibility actually provides adequate privacy.
Here is a page describing how this can be done cheaply for amateur astronomy.