RameshRaskar
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MIT builds camera that can capture at the speed of light (video)
A team from the MIT media lab has created a camera with a "shutter speed" of one trillion exposures per second -- enabling it to record light itself traveling from one point to another. Using a heavily modified Streak Tube (which is normally used to intensify photons into electron streams), the team could snap a single image of a laser as it passed through a soda bottle. In order to create the slow-motion film in the video we've got after the break, the team had to replicate the experiment hundreds of times. The stop-motion footage shows how light bounces through the bottle, collecting inside the opaque cap before dispersing. The revolutionary snapper may have a fast shutter but the long time it takes to process the images have earned it the nickname of the "the world's slowest fastest camera." [Image courtesy of MIT / M. Scott Brauer]
MIT's laser camera can photograph around corners, render your camouflage useless
You know, we'd love to meet this Ramesh Raskar character. Possibly even shake his hand, or secretly become injected with a pinch of his DNA. You see, he's devoted his life to proving that the impossible is actually possible, first conjuring up a 6D "super-realistic" image system just over two years ago. Now, he's onto bigger and better things... things like cameras that can see around corners. Granted, this concept isn't exactly a new one -- LIDAR-equipped robots have been discovering hidden objects for years, but the mere thought of cramming this technology into a camera has us salivating. Auntie Beeb has a new piece up on the technology, and it actually does an exceptional job of explaining the technobabble. Put simply, the created prototype utilizes an ultra-short, highly intense burst of laser light (a femotosecond laser, if you have to know) to light up a scene; from there, it bends around corners and bounces back, using algorithms to figure out what's inside of the room based on the bounce points. We're guessing it'll still be a few decades before this gets wrapped into a mid-range DSLR, but we're cautiously hoping for a working mockup at CES 2015. Seriously, we just marked it down. Don't disappoint us, guys.
