Which I’d never heard of. MIT’s Technology Review covers the latest accomplishment involving single pixel cameras:
In the last few years, single-pixel cameras have begun to revolutionize the field of imaging. These counterintuitive devices produce high-resolution images using a single pixel to detect light. They do not need lenses, the images of have none of the distortions that lenses produce, and the entire picture is always in focus. Physicists have used them to make movies and even to create 3-D images.
And that raises an interesting question: how much more can these devices do?
Today we get an answer of sorts thanks to the work of Bin Bai and co at Xi’an Jiaotong University in China, who have built a single pixel camera that can see around corners. Their new device can photograph objects even when they are not in direct view.
The technique is similar to that used with other single pixel cameras. The trick is to first randomize the light that the pixel detects, record the resulting light intensity, and then repeat this process thousands of times.
It’s easy to think that this randomization makes the task of creating an image even harder, but the reverse is true.
So the Chinese researchers are mining the reflections of a convenient wall to see around the corner. It doesn’t say how long it takes to acquire the 50,000 inputs used to compose the image.
