A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor has invented a new digital camera that can see around corners.
The new camera will allow users to shoot pictures of people and scenes around the corner of a building.
Laser-vision
The tech magic is down to the use of an ultra-short high-intensity burst of laser light which illuminates the scene, by collecting tiny amounts of light that bounce around objects around corners hidden from the human eye.
A femtosecond laser lets the camera shoot ultra-short bursts of laser light that last for one quadrillionth of a second.
The MIT team hopes the new camera tech will have numerous useful military applications.
"It's like having x-ray vision without the x-rays," said Prof. Ramesh Raskar, head of the Camera Culture group at the MIT Media Lab.
"But we're going around the problem rather than going through it.
"You could generate a map before you go into a dangerous place like a building fire, or a robotic car could use the system to compute the path it should take around a corner before it takes it," added Prof Raskar
Professor Raskar and his team have been working on developing the new camera tech for the last three years
Via BBC News and MIT
