Video: How MIT's Laser Camera Can See Around Corners

Popular Science‘s popsci.com reports that back in late 2010, MIT Media Lab announced that it was working on technology that would allow a camera to see around corners and image objects that were never in its direct line of sight. Now, the lab has released a video explaining exactly how they do this and showing the technology in action.

Briefly, the system works by firing rapid femtosecond laser pulses–pulses so short they are measured in quadrillionths of a second–at a surface opposite the obscured object it is trying to image, like the wall opposite a doorway for instance. The laser light bounces off the wall and scatters. Some of that light hits the target object and likewise scatters. And some of that light ends up bouncing back off the wall and finding its way back to the camera sensor.

Read more and watch the video at http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-03/video-how-mits-femtosecond-laser-camera-can-see-around-corners