When you need to see around a corner in a corridor, there’s a way to do that, as NewScientist (26 January 2019) reports:
WE MAY soon be able to see what is lurking out of sight, thanks to an algorithm that allows a camera to make out objects hidden from view. This might one day enable autonomous vehicles to spot hazards before they are visible.
The algorithm was created by Vivek Goyal at Boston University in Massachusetts and colleagues. It works by analysing the faint reflections of obscured objects on a surface such as a wall. Specialist equipment isn’t needed to gather the images of reflections – a normal digital camera suffices.
Which, of course, leads to questions concerning actually making this available:
The team thinks that phone cameras may be good enough for the technique and that eventually they will be able to create an app for seeing objects around corners.
“The results are stunning,” says Gordon Wetzstein at Stanford University, California. He says this is the first time that a technique like this has produced full-colour reconstructions.
Eventually? Someone’s probably working on making this fly next week.
This strikes me as a true enhancement to human capabilities, rather than merely replacing humans, as do many robots. I think this is more significant than those human-replacing robots.
Or word processors.
