DARPA Seeking Technology To See Behind Obstructions

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Ever seen Superman use his X-ray vision to see through walls and feel a little pang of envy? You’re not alone. The US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding research that could eventually pan out into technology to allow us to do just that.

Researchers from the Lyle School of Engineering at Texas’ Southern Methodist University are getting funding from DARPA to lead an inter-university team “to build a theoretical framework for creating a computer-generated image of an object hidden from sight around a corner or behind a wall,” Phys.org reports.

The research seeks to develop computer algorithms to unscramble light that bounces off irregular surfaces and to use this data “to create a holographic image of hidden objects.”

“This will allow us to build a 3-D representation – a hologram – of something that is out of view,” said dean of the Lyle school, Marc Christensen. “Your eyes can’t do that,” Christensen said. “It doesn’t mean we can’t do that.
DARPA is shelling out $4.87m for the four-year REVEAL project. So far $2.2m has been granted to the SMU, with a further $2.67m to be released in 2018. The SMU team is collaborating with engineers from Harvard, Northwestern, and Rice Universities.

“Light bounces off the smooth surface of a mirror at the same angle at which it hits the mirror, which is what allows the human eye to ‘see’ a recognizable image of the event – a reflection,” Christensen explained. “But light bouncing off the irregular surface of a wall or other non-reflective surface is scattered, which the human eye cannot image into anything intelligible. So the question becomes whether a computer can manipulate and process the light reflecting off a wall – unscrambling it to form a recognizable image – like light reflecting off a mirror,” Christensen said. “Can a computer interpret the light bouncing around in ways that our eyes cannot?”

This research hopes that the answer is yes. The project’s goal is to develop a new fundamental science for indirect imaging. From this base, new systems could be developed that could “see” around corners and behind obstacles. All this is made possible by the advances in computational power and processing.

“For example, the speed and sophistication of signal processing (the process of converting analog transmissions into digital signals) has reached the point where we can accomplish really intensive computational tasks on handheld devices,” Christensen said. “What that means is that whatever solutions we design should be easily transportable into the battlefield.”