How to See Around Corners

Synopsis: The ability to see objects hidden behind walls could be invaluable in dangerous or inaccessible locations, such as inside machinery with moving parts, or in highly contaminated areas. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed an ultra-fast camera that can do this, using scattered laser light. They fire a pulse of laser light at a wall on the far side of the hidden scene, and record the time at which the scattered light reaches a camera. Photons bounce off the wall onto the hidden object and back to the wall, scattering each time, before a small fraction eventually reaches the camera, each at a slightly different time. and this information is then decoded by a reconstruction algorithm. (3 minutes)
Language: English
Country: Great Britain
Year of release: 2012
Year of production: 2012
Subjects: Physics
Keywords: lasers; photogrammetry

This record has been viewed 299 times.

British Universities Film & Video Council