{"id":51655,"date":"2016-07-31T18:51:21","date_gmt":"2016-07-31T18:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=51655"},"modified":"2016-07-31T19:22:13","modified_gmt":"2016-07-31T19:22:13","slug":"sunday-surprise-peering-digitally-around-corners-2-bladerunner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=51655","title":{"rendered":"Sunday surprise: peering digitally around corners 2: Blade Runner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[ by <strong>Charles Cameron<\/strong> &#8212; moving from a <a href=\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=51642\">consideration of Holbein&#8217;s Ambassadors<\/a> to a celebrated scene in Ridley Scott&#8217;s Blade Runner &#8212; and thence, wide-angle, to Kumbh Mela ]<br \/>\n.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the <strong>Bladerunner<\/strong> scene:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QkcU0gwZUdg\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What <strong>Ridley Scott<\/strong> depicts is a camera with the ability to see around corners &#8212; a fantastic piece of science fictional cinematography, demonstrating a <a href=\"http:\/\/izquotes.com\/quotes-pictures\/quote-clarke-s-third-law-any-sufficiently-advanced-technology-is-indistinguishable-from-magic-arthur-c-clarke-219641.jpg\">sufficiently advanced technology<\/a> with a skill amounting to <strong>wizardry<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>How close, though, can state-of-the-art cameras come to <strong>seeing around corners<\/strong>? Here&#8217;s what <em>Nature <\/em>has to say:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Andreas Velten,\tThomas Willwacher, Otkrist Gupta, Ashok Veeraraghavan, Moungi G. Bawendi &#038; Ramesh Raskar<\/strong>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/ncomms\/journal\/v3\/n3\/full\/ncomms1747.html\">Recovering three-dimensional shape around a corner using ultrafast time-of-flight imaging<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Abstract:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The recovery of objects obscured by scattering is an important goal in imaging and has been approached by exploiting, for example, coherence properties, ballistic photons or penetrating wavelengths. Common methods use scattered light transmitted through an occluding material, although these fail if the occluder is opaque. Light is scattered not only by transmission through objects, but also by multiple reflection from diffuse surfaces in a scene. This reflected light contains information about the scene that becomes mixed by the diffuse reflections before reaching the image sensor. This mixing is difficult to decode using traditional cameras. Here we report the combination of a time-of-flight technique and computational reconstruction algorithms to untangle image information mixed by diffuse reflection. We demonstrate a three-dimensional range camera able to look around a corner using diffusely reflected light that achieves sub-millimetre depth precision and centimetre lateral precision over 40 cm\u00d740 cm\u00d740 cm of hidden space.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><div style=\"width: 560px;\" class=\"wp-video\"><video class=\"wp-video-shortcode\" id=\"video-51655-1\" width=\"560\" height=\"420\" preload=\"metadata\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"video\/mp4\" src=\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/ncomms1747-s2.mp4?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/ncomms1747-s2.mp4\">http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/ncomms1747-s2.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div><\/blockquote>\n<p>Here&#8217;s another illustrative video:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JWDocXPy-iQ\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>&#8216;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>Okay, seeing is simple, but we&#8217;re <strong>Zenpundit<\/strong>, so there&#8217;s gotta be a military angle we can see around, no?<\/p>\n<p>Here are two possibilities &#8212; the first is called <strong>CornerShot<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9C0FQPk5mv0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>while the second is called <strong>ShotView<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OKldy2YNAHk\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re still pretty far from Ridley&#8217;s <strong>Blade Runner<\/strong>, but the idea of seeing \/ shooting around corners has clearly caught the imagination of others.<\/p>\n<p>Okay, those last two videos are for those interested in matters martial.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Kumbh-Mela.png\" alt=\"Kumbh Mela\" width=\"600\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-51734\" srcset=\"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Kumbh-Mela.png 600w, https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Kumbh-Mela-300x150.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>For my own sake, and for the possible interest of blog-friend <strong>Pundita<\/strong>, let&#8217;s take a look at a video of <strong>Ramesh Raskar<\/strong>, head of <strong>MIT Media Lab&#8217;s Camera Culture research group<\/strong> and one of the authors of the <em>Nature <\/em>paper quoted above.<\/p>\n<p>Here Dr Raskar is talking about that most fascinating of Hindu festivals &#8212; and largest of human gatherings? &#8212; the <strong>Kumbh Mela<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xJyWSwut7lQ\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Talk about <strong>wicked problems<\/strong> &#8212; and <strong>crowd-sourcing solutions<\/strong> &#8212; and <strong>genius <\/strong>&#8212; and the manifold intersections of <strong>the secular<\/strong> and <strong>the sacred<\/strong>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ by Charles Cameron &#8212; moving from a consideration of Holbein&#8217;s Ambassadors to a celebrated scene in Ridley Scott&#8217;s Blade Runner &#8212; and thence, wide-angle, to Kumbh Mela ] . Here&#8217;s the Bladerunner scene: What Ridley Scott depicts is a camera with the ability to see around corners &#8212; a fantastic piece of science fictional [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[526,1080,832,139,39,1396,67,778,946,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charles-cameron","category-gun","category-hinduism","category-media","category-military","category-mit","category-movies","category-photography","category-sunday-surprise","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51655"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51739,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51655\/revisions\/51739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}