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Have MIT camera, will peek around corners
Researchers at MIT like what they see so far from a camera that can perform a nifty trick: peer around a corner.
And it captures a 3D image to boot.
The innovative process is called femtophotography, after the incredibly quick laser pulses involved; they're measured in quadrillionths of a second. Those bursts of light bounce around off ordinary doors or walls or floors -- mirrors need not apply -- and make their way back to a picosecond-accurate detector at the camera (picoseconds = trillionths of a second) that records the elapsed time and then does the math on how the light bursts traveled.
The system runs through the drill multiple times in that blink of an eye, with the light bursts traveling several different routes to provide a more complete 3D image.
Or to put it in a more mind-blowing perspective, the camera captures all that target object illumination at the equivalent of roughly 1 trillion frames per second. Much more detail is available at this FAQ on the Camera Culture site.… Read more
