Scientists have learned to “see beyond walls”

The University of Glasgow has showcased a new “ghost visualization” system that uses a combination of the human eye, brain and artificial intelligence to allow you to literally “see through walls”. This allows, for example, to identify an object in the corner without looking there. technology is called “Shaping out of images”. Previously, a laser beam and a camera were used in similar experiments.

In the experiment, the hidden object consisted of patterns of light thrown by the projector over a cutout of cardboard. Thus, one could only see scattered light on a white wall, without distinguishing the outline of the object. And at this stage, the neural network came into play.

Electroencephalogram signals were read from the human brain and then transmitted to a laptop computer, decoding the scattered light and allowing the object to be recognized. In other words, the human was part of a system to recognize and decode data. Each “object” was a 16 × 16 pixel image and its patterns flickered at 6 Hz for two seconds. Apparently, within a minute of observation, the system on the laptop was already able to determine what kind of object it was.

“This is one of the first cases where computational imaging has been performed using the human visual system in the neurobiocontrol loop that adjusts the visualization process in real time. Although we could use a standard detector instead of a human brain to detect signals scattering from the wall, we wanted to explore methods that could one day be used to augment human capabilities,” said Daniele Faccio, principal investigator of the project. It is planned that in the future the same experiments will be carried out with several spectators and in three dimensions. Source