Episode 85: Seeing Around Corners
As part of a DARPA research program, Amit Ashok, Assistant Professor of Optical Sciences and of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has assembled a multi-disciplinary team of optical physicists, computer scientists, mathematicians, and engineers to explore new imaging techniques that exploit complex reflections of light to essentially look through objects and around corners. As light bounces around in a scene, each interaction of light with a surface imprints information about it as it propagates to a camera. By employing specialized optics and ultra sensitive light detectors the team is able to extract information about objects which are not in the field of view or line of sight of a camera. Such information can then be used to render a three-dimensional scene and navigate through it using computer graphics techniques. Potential applications of such imaging techniques include autonomous navigation, security and surveillance. In this episode: Amit Ashok, PhD., Assistant Professor of Optical Sciences and of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Leslie Tolbert, PhD., Regents' Professor in Neuroscience