so have you ever wondered what it would
be like to see through walls
well researchers at stanford university
might have just cracked the code
on this superpower this latest work
comes from the same team at stanford
that developed a wave-based
non-line of sight imaging system back in
2019
this camera is capable of seeing around
corners by bouncing a laser off the wall
and analyzing the reflected light that
returns to the sensor
that 2019 goal was to improve optical
imaging techniques
such as light detection and ranging
systems or
lidar which is most often used in ground
underwater and aerial vehicles
to better understand their immediate
surroundings but one of the biggest
challenges of lidar systems has been
trying to peer through hazy conditions
like an autonomous vehicle trying to
drive through fog
or an orbiting spacecraft looking
through the thick atmosphere of another
planet
these types of conditions scattered the
light way too much for lidar systems
making it really tough to detect
anything through it but now the stanford
team has gone one step further
by creating confocal diffuse tomography
or cdt
which allows a camera to see right
through what they call a scattering
media
or they can just call it what it is it's
a thin piece of foam
cdt is a process that uses a single
photon avalanche diode
and pulsated laser systems to
effectively see through a medium
so what exactly does that mean let me
explain it this way with a
short pulse of light a laser illuminates
a point on a surface
from here the light diffuses through the
foam and onto the surface of your target
object on the opposite side the light
from the laser then bounces off the
surface of the object
and diffuses once again back through the
foam and returns to the original point
the laser was illuminating
researchers then used a processing
algorithm and their collected data
points
to produce a histogram which will show
the photon count along the y-axis
and the time along the x-axis so through
these points this helps give researchers
their first glimpse of what's actually
on the other side
but that's just the first step in order
to get a 3d image this process has to be
done multiple times
by scanning a series of points on a grid
through a process the team calls
confocal scanning these data points then
work together to effectively create a
blurry map of the image
using this researchers can then apply a
specific set of algorithms and light
filters to reconstruct the completed 3d
image of the target
object and the best part about it is
that although this might seem like a
really really long process
this team is actually able to completely
reconstruct an image
in as little as .3 seconds
so how can cdt help us in the future the
research suggests that this form of
non-invasive 3d imaging
through a medium might just
revolutionize the way we approach
autonomous vehicle navigation in bad
weather like fog
and heavy snowstorms but if we think
even bigger
this could probably also help first
responders handle emergencies
like a firefighter and a burning
building but until then
i'll settle for using this newfound
power to be the hide and go seek master
to learn more about the team's research
from last year check it out here
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thanks so much for watching and i'll see
you next time