Imagine being able to see around corners. Impossible, surely? Not for Ramesh Raskar.
The associate professor of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, recipient of the 2024 RPS Award for Imaging Science, led a team that developed a technique that allows us to do exactly that. But how?
“We are familiar with the way the echoes of sound,” explains Raskar. “This works with the echoes of light.
“The reason we can talk to someone who is around a corner, even if we can’t see them, is the way that sound bounces. It’s the same with light but it moves nearly a million times faster so our eyes, our brains can’t process it so we think if someone is round the corner, they’re invisible, but they are visible if the light can be processed faster.”
As demonstrated in the video above, with the right camera anything is possible.
“Before the invention of telecommunications we never would have imagined that someone in Europe could be talking to someone in the US because it’s beyond our human abilities,” he says. “It’s the same with imaging technology. This has many applications – the automotive industry is a big one.
“In a hybrid vehicle, if you can predict when you're going to need to brake, then you can start slowing down in advance, converting kinetic energy back into battery energy. And so, if you can see around corners, you can easily figure out, ‘should I brake or not?’ You know, ‘is that street clear or not?’ This is in addition, of course, to reducing collisions. The ability to see 10, 20 seconds ahead has a major sustainability and safety factor.”
Discover more about the work of Ramesh Raskar and meet some of the 2024 RPS Awards recipients in the January-March 2025 issue of the RPS Journal.
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