A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has produced a camera that can capture images from around corners. No mirrors are involved. The new technology uses highly intense, quick bursts of laser light, which hit objects that are out of sight. This process is repeated dozens of times in a very short amount of time. The reflected light from these objects makes its way back to the camera, where it is processed by a computer algorithm and reconstructed into the image. MIT Professor Ramesh Raskar of the team compares the reflections to sound waves.
This new camera may prove to be very useful, and not just in the spying industry. The professor suggests a disaster situation in which injured people must be rescued from a collapsed building, or even the use of the camera as a medical device, enabling doctors to observe areas in the body which have been hidden until now.
