MIT Researchers Develop a Technique That Could Guide Self-Driving Cars in Fog or Rain

Researchers at MIT have developed a technique that can recover visual information from light that has scattered due to interactions with the environment. One example is light that has passed through human tissue. The technique could enable medical imaging systems that use visible light or computer vision systems that work in fog or drizzle. The latter could find potential applications in self-driving cars since current algorithms for guiding self-driving cars do not work in conditions such as fog or drizzle.

The system relies on pulsed laser that emits ultra short bursts of light and a high-speed camera that can distinguish the arrival times of different groups of photons.

Source: Algorithm could enable visible-light-based imaging for medical devices, autonomous vehicles, http://news.mit.edu/2016/all-photons-imaging-algorithm-0929