Someday your self-driving car could react to hazards before you even see them, thanks to a laser-based imaging technology being developed by Stanford researchers that can peek around corners.
A driverless car is making its way through a winding neighborhood street, about to make a sharp turn onto a road where a child’s ball has just rolled. Although no person in the car can see that ball, the car stops to avoid it. This is because the car is outfitted with extremely sensitive laser technology that reflects off nearby objects to see around corners.
This scenario is one of many that researchers at Stanford University are imagining for a system that can produce images of objects hidden from view. They are focused on applications for autonomous vehicles, some of which already have similar laser-based systems for detecting objects around the car, but other uses could include seeing through foliage from aerial vehicles or giving rescue teams the ability to find people blocked from view by walls and rubble.
“It sounds like magic but the idea of non-line-of-sight imaging is actually feasible,” said Gordon Wetzstein, assistant professor of electrical engineering and senior author of the paper describing this work, published March 5 in Nature.
Seeing the unseen
The Stanford group isn’t alone in developing methods for bouncing lasers around corners to capture images of objects. Where this research advances the field is in the extremely efficient and effective algorithm the researchers developed to process the final image.
“A substantial challenge in non-line-of-sight imaging is figuring out an efficient way to recover the 3-D structure of the hidden object from the noisy measurements,” said David Lindell, graduate student in the Stanford Computational Imaging Lab and co-author of the paper. “I think the big impact of this method is how computationally efficient it is.”
For their system, the researchers set a laser next to a highly sensitive photon detector, which can record even a single particle of light. They shoot pulses of laser light at a wall and, invisible to the human eye, those pulses bounce off objects around the corner and bounce back to the wall and to the detector. Currently, this scan can take from two minutes to an hour, depending on conditions such as lighting and the reflectivity of the hidden object.
Once the scan is finished, the algorithm untangles the paths of the captured photons and, like the mythical image enhancement technology of television crime shows, the blurry blob takes much sharper form. It does all this in less than a second and is so efficient it can run on a regular laptop. Based on how well the algorithm currently works, the researchers think they could speed it up so that it is nearly instantaneous once the scan is complete.
Into the ‘wild’
The team is continuing to work on this system, so it can better handle the variability of the real world and complete the scan more quickly. For example, the distance to the object and amount of ambient light can make it difficult for their technology to see the light particles it needs to resolve out-of-sight objects. This technique also depends on analyzing scattered light particles that are intentionally ignored by guidance systems currently in cars – known as LIDAR systems.
“We believe the computation algorithm is already ready for LIDAR systems,” said Matthew O’Toole, a postdoctoral scholar in the Stanford Computational Imaging Lab and co-lead author of the paper. “The key question is if the current hardware of LIDAR systems supports this type of imaging.”
Before this system is road ready, it will also have to work better in daylight and with objects in motion, like a bouncing ball or running child. The researchers did test their technique successfully outside but they worked only with indirect light. Their technology did perform particularly well picking out retroreflective objects, such as safety apparel or traffic signs. The researchers say that if the technology were placed on a car today, that car could easily detect things like road signs, safety vests or road markers, although it might struggle with a person wearing non-reflective clothing.
“This is a big step forward for our field that will hopefully benefit all of us,” said Wetzstein. “In the future, we want to make it even more practical in the ‘wild.’”
Learn more: Stanford researchers develop technique to see objects hidden around corners
The Latest on: Non-line-of-sight imaging
[google_news title=”” keyword=”Non-line-of-sight imaging” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Non-line-of-sight imaging
- ‘Ryan Reynolds never had to deal with this’: the slow death and (possible) rebirth of Southend Unitedon May 1, 2024 at 9:00 pm
“I probably see him three or four times a week and he’s always smirking,” said a 25-year-old fan who told me his name was Harry, when I asked if he ever caught sight of Ron during ... like the sort of ...
- Restaurant Brands International Inc. (NYSE:QSR) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcripton May 1, 2024 at 8:00 am
Q1 2024 Earnings Call April 30, 2024 Restaurant Brands International Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.73, expectations were $0.72. Restaurant Brands International Inc. isn’t one of ...
- Hyperspectral rigid-scope set to assist imaging of tissues, blood vessels, nerveson May 1, 2024 at 6:59 am
The TUS breakthrough is built around a supercontinuum (SC) light source and an acoustic-opto tunable filter (AOTF). A SC light source can output intense coherent white light, while the AOTF can ...
- Core Laboratories N.V. (NYSE:CLB) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcripton April 30, 2024 at 9:20 am
Q1 2024 Earnings Call April 25, 2024 Core Laboratories N.V. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here). Operator: Good morning and ...
- Comstock Announces First Quarter 2024 Results and Corporate Updateson April 30, 2024 at 3:51 am
VIRGINIA CITY, Nev., April 30, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Comstock Inc. (NYSE: LODE) (“Comstock,” “our,” and the “Company”), today announced its first quarter 2024 results, business updates and an ...
- 'Seeing the invisible': New tech enables deep tissue imaging during surgeryon April 29, 2024 at 5:45 pm
Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) is a state-of-the-art imaging technique useful for determining the composition of a variety of objects. Specifically, over-thousand-nanometer (OTN) HSI is particularly ...
- Day of remembrance set for stabbing victimon April 25, 2024 at 7:27 am
Taken too soon, Karim Abou Najm, the computer scientist just six weeks shy from graduating from UC Davis with honors, was working on software to help the hearing-impaired in noisy ...
- Diagnosis of rare eye diseases: Uveitis experts provide an overview of an underestimated imaging techniqueon April 25, 2024 at 6:51 am
Uveitis is a rare inflammatory eye disease. Posterior and panuveitis in particular are associated with a poor prognosis and a protracted course of the disease. Diagnosis and monitoring can be ...
- How 6G Research Will Revolutionize Mobile Experienceson April 25, 2024 at 12:01 am
By 2030, 6G is expected to be commercially available, revolutionizing connectivity with lightning-fast speeds, unprecedented bandwidths, and ultra-low latencies. It will transform various sectors, ...
- Day of remembrance set for Karim Abou Najmon April 24, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Taken too soon, Karim Abou Najm, the computer scientist just shy of six weeks from graduating from UC Davis with honors, was working on software to help the hearing impaired ...
via Bing News