Name: Seeing through fog
Uploaded: 2021-02-23T13:00:33.000Z
Duration: 3 min
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Maneuvering a vehicle in any type of weather

can come with its own set of challenges and limitations.

that limit visibility, such as mist or fog,

can be even more challenging or even dangerous.

But now, thanks to a team of researchers out of MIT

MIT researchers have developed a novel imaging system that

shrouded by fog so thick that human vision can't penetrate

An inability to handle misty driving conditions

to the development of reliable autonomous vehicular navigation

So the MIT system could be a crucial step

To test their system, the team placed objects

in an enclosed box approximately one meter long

and then gradually filled the space with thick fog.

into the foggy scene and then a camera that

measures the time it takes their reflections to return.

What they found was their system was able to image objects

even when they were indiscernible to the naked eye.

that human vision could only penetrate 36 centimeters,

their system was able to resolve images of objects

and gauge their depth at a range of 57 centimeters.

but the fog produced for the study is far denser than any

that a human driver would have to contend

The vital point is that the system performed far better

than human vision, whereas previous systems have performed

the issue of light reflecting off water droplets in fog,

which confuses most imaging systems, making

it almost impossible to discern objects ahead.

The MIT researchers developed an algorithm

the raw data from the camera into two parts,

the light reflected from the shrouded object

is then used to image the scene and calculate the object's

Of course, visibility is not a well-defined concept,

since objects with different colors and/or textures

are visible through fog at different distances.

called "optical depth," which describes the amount of light

Optical depth is independent of distance,

that has a particular optical depth at a range of one meter

should be the same as its performance on fog

that has the same optical depth at a range of, say, 50 meters.

will be greater, which could make for more accurate images.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Seeing through fog

crucial

vital

concept

typically