Camera Can 'See' Moving Objects Around Corners
A camera system developed at Stanford University can reconstruct room-sized scenes and moving objects that are hidden around a corner. The technology could one day help autonomous cars and robots operate even more safely than they would with human guidance. Previous systems for viewing scenes outside a camera’s line of sight relied on objects that either reflect light evenly or strongly. But real-world objects, including shiny cars, fall outside these categories. Central to Stanford's advance is a very powerful laser; it scans a wall opposite the scene of interest and that light bounces off the wall, hits the objects in the scene, bounces back to the wall, and to the camera sensors. The system can scan at four frames per second and can reconstruct a scene at speeds of 60 frames per second on a computer with a graphics processing unit, which enhances graphics processing capabilities.