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Laser Camera Can See Around Corners
Hugh Pickens writes "Researchers at MIT have developed a laser camera that can 'see' around corners and take pictures of a scene not in its direct line of sight. The camera system fires extremely short bursts of light that can reflect off one object, such as the open door of a room, and then off a second object inside the room before reflecting back to the first object and being captured by the camera, after which algorithms can use the information to reconstruct the hidden scene exploiting the fact that it is possible to capture light at extremely short time scales, about one quadrillionth of a second. By continuously gathering light and computing the time and distance that each pixel has traveled, the camera creates a '3D time-image' of the scene it can't directly see. 'It's like having X-ray vision without the X-rays,' says Professor Ramesh Raskar. 'We're going around the problem rather than going through it.'"
Why articles like these do not have any related images?
Great, so instead of x-raying or groping travellers, maybe TSA can subtly take a few snaps up the leg of people's trousers and down the top of your t-shirt :-)
http://www.prisonplanet.com/tsa-now-putting-hands-down-fliers-pants.html
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/11/tsa-investigating-passenger/
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attached to the head of a shark! With a CornerShot! I bet that would make Dr Evil wet his pants
It's like having X-ray vision without the X-rays...
So it's like having vision?
http://web.media.mit.edu/~raskar/femto/
Enough of Slashdot's SEO link farming spammy shit. Here's what you want to read, unless you like your science news dumbed down to a third grade level.
or it didn't happen!
ssia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxq9yj2pVWk
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
It would make a helluva lot more sense to just use high-intensity microwaves. Think of how Dolphins and bats see their environment. the device to see around corners would have to take various additional factors into account of course, like distance from the reflecting surface and angle of beam contact to said surface. After that, it's just a matter of painting a 3d version of the room. :|
Geekism is your _only_ God!
The process has to be incredibly time-sensitive in order to work, and the imaging process has to subtract ambient light in order to obtain the reflected-laser data. This ambient-light recording has to happen at a different time to when the laser is fired, so variable-light conditions or the lack of an incredibly steady camera, image object and reflective surface will make it basically impossible to render the image.
I absolutely love the concept. I just think that the nay-sayers whom Professor Raskar claims to be defeating were correct. It might not be theoretically impossible, but the practical limitations are so severe that I don't envisage them being "engineered" away - and if they are, such phenomenal engineering accomplishments would make this application appear trivial in comparison with the other things we could do.
Meta will eat itself
The first customer will either be the TSA or some branch of the military.
High-tech companies would invent anything that would sell to any agency vaguely related to counter-terrorism or warfare these days. If they poured a tenth of the resources they spent developing this kind of devices into finding solutions to the world's real problems, we'd all be cancer-free and solar-powered by now...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Slashdot says that UPI.com said that physorg.com said that Tech Radar said that MIT said that there is an interesting paper at http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/58402/656284100.pdf?sequence=1 and the BBC went to learn more, conduct an interview and take photos http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11544037
Unless I can use it to "see" through the walls of the girls locker-room, then its not X-Ray vision.
Now you know why their eyes are a'glowin'.
I can see this being applied to lenses and windshields to give you an idea of who or what is lurking around the corner...
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Pix or it didn't happen.
Now that scene in Blade Runner is making more sense...
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
I love how all the researchers materials are all "Humanitarian" and indicate that this will be used to help people (fires, safety, etc...).
I give it about 15 minutes before the government gets wind of it and turns it into a tool for mass invasion of privacy and uses it somehow in this ongoing war on our freedoms.
I would be more optimistic, but their track record isn't encouraging.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
"By continuously gathering light and computing the time and distance that each pixel has traveled"
right, so pixels travel!?! wtf has happened to /. editors? have they any clue of science???
photons, depending on perspective, travel. pixels, are part of an image.
is slashdot going to become worse than the pseudo science of mythbusters????
However, he said, the team initially aim to use the system to build an advanced endoscope.
"It's an easy application to target," he said. "It's a nice, dark, damp and warm environment."
If the team get good results from their trials, he said, they could have a working endoscope prototype within two years.
"By continuously gathering light and computing the time and distance that each pixel has traveled"
Do pixels travel at the speed of light? I wonder what it feels like to get hit by a pixel. Are they larger or smaller than a photon? I am really curious about this, I didn't realize that a pixel was a physical phenomena. It looks like the photon has some competition.
Reminds me of Dual Photography
This sounds like it's fundamentally the same as radar or sonar but using light instead.
Oh crap, CSI is real!?!
here is how this technology could be used as a forensics tool
You can't handle the truth.
If it has to be incredibly time sensitive to work why not use sound (ultra-sonic waves, like bats use) instead. This should reduce the time sensitivity requirements by many orders of magnitude. It will also reduce the resolution but considering that bats can catch insects in flight probably will still be good enough to "see" someone hiding behind a door.
Or perhaps they need a coherent (laser) beam of sound? Perhaps this can be engineered around. Might also be useful underwater.
It is ridiculous to call this new technology. It is just another form range sensing that is being researched in universities all over the world. Light is still just electromagnetic radiation. I am sure there are lots of other projects doing the same this as this, but since it is from the MIT Media Lab it gets the "oooo, awww.." factor.
Using the backscatter from diffuse reflection is seriously limiting.
Radar systems are brutally prone to clutter, echoes, and interference. The system is limited by range, and a linear line of sight (from object to object in this case).
It will only produce a three dimensional image when in a closed environment. Otherwise it will only produce a front shadow of a figure.
It blows me away how often old technology is replicated in computer science and called new technology. Not that their software does not make it better (like some decent noise cancelling), but to call it "new" is like painting a white horse with black stripes and calling it a zebra.
Do you know *any* new technology that is not related to an older one ? Me neither.
Except that what is retroactively called substantial progress should almost always be seen as painting a horse in retrospect. I expect the metaphor of cars as "horseless carriages" was part of their design and not just part of their marketing.
This is not to say all developments are equivalently important, just that at the time people are rarely accurate at assessing how important they truly will be short of some spectacular scenarios.
TFP mentions that the laser is operated at an average power of 425 mW. So I'd rather not be the guy standing round the corner getting hit in the eye with such a beam.
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This is great. Its an EDM. Surveyors and engineers have been using this technology for half a century, the only difference is they have been excluding these types of measurements deemed reflective inaccuracy. This is a neat idea.
Some creep is now thinking, "now I don't have to put spycams on my shoes!"
So this is like looking at a mirror. Or pointing a flashlight at a mirror and looking around a corner.
Different wavelength so the door looks like a mirror So why is this news?
I saw this on CSI like eight years ago.
Your brain is not a computer.
That is, when they have the CSI on TV "enhance the photo, show me the reflection in the car side mirror" In real life, we can not, or rather COULD NOT do that. But with these special cameras, apparently we will be able to do it.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Haven't read TFA, but without pictures it didn't happen.
Hmmm, I seem to remember this technology from years ago...
That scene with Deckard dissecting the photograph on his weird-ass computer and literally changing the angle and viewpoint arbitrarily always bugged me.
Now, not so much. It must have had an embedded holographic layer that took several angles.
Yeah, that's it.
She blinded me with science, she tricked me with technology. ~ Thomas Dolby
f'd up moderators here.
Is it really "seeing around corners" if it needs something that the light can bounce off? With a mirror in the right place I can also "see around corners"
I'm sure it's still a great engineering accomplishment, but I wouldn't call it seeing around corners