Yes you read that right, MIT has invented a see through camera. It’s not the x-ray glasses popularized on TV and pop culture, instead its microwaves sent through an object.
Although this technology isn’t made for consumers, the use of a microwave camera that ‘sees’ behind a wall or through inclement weather can help assist rescue workers in detecting survivors buried somewhere or law enforcement to see what’s in a building before entering.
So how does this see through camera work? According to the abstract of the “Time-of-Flight Microwave Camera” conducted by MIT’s Camera Culture Group the camera uses low-powered microwaves (100,000 times weaker than your home microwave) to penetrate through solid objects.
The lead author on the study, Gregory Charvat, explains that the camera uses a microwave-radiating flash that pulses through an object and returns back onto a sensor. That sensor captures the information from the microwaves and creates a high-resolution image.
The camera has to utilize smaller microwave wavelengths because larger waves reflect on a solid object like a mirror, and in turn have a harder time passing through an object. So by using a smaller microwave the researchers devised a way to render a 3D image by using a technique where the camera sends multiple microwaves at different angles to capture multiple frames which are then composited into a 3D image.
The researchers were able to successfully use the microwave camera to detect a plastic mannequin wrapped in aluminum foil behind dry wall and plywood. Currently the camera is a circular dish that is 48-inches in diameter made from off-the-shelf parts that costs roughly $1,000. However, the researchers say that the size of the camera can be made with even smaller microwaves a tenth of the size now to make a camera 4.8-inches in diameter.
To read the abstract from the MIT study click here; or to see another MIT invention click here.
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