It sounds like a scenario straight out of a sci-fi movie.
But researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh have developed a new light detection system that can recognise human faces and objects from more than half a mile away – even at night or through smoke or fog.
Scientists say the ground-breaking research could be a ‘step change’ for security and defence and has the potential to ‘make identification significantly easier’.
Using pulses of laser light to measure the distances to objects, the system can construct ‘high-resolution 3D images’ of faces and other surfaces from as far away as ten football pitches in both daylight and darkness.
Dr Aongus McCarthy, an optical scientist and research fellow at Heriot-Watt’s Institute of Photonics and Quantum Sciences, said: ‘If someone is standing behind camouflage netting, this system has the potential to determine whether they are on their mobile phone, holding something, or just standing there idle.’
He admitted the research, which has been published in the optics and photonics journal Optica, is in the ‘very early stages of development’.
But he said the results ‘show enormous potential’ and ‘in a commercial form’ could be used in security and defence settings, autonomous vehicles and to monitor the movement of buildings or rock faces to assess subsidence or other potential hazards.
Dr McCarthy said: ‘An example of a security or defence application might be as part of a camera system that’s used to remotely monitor secure buildings or areas.
Researchers have developed a new light detection system (pictured) that can recognise human faces and objects from more than half a mile away – even at night or through smoke or fog
Dr Aongus McCarthy (pictured), an optical scientist and research fellow at Heriot-Watt’s Institute of Photonics and Quantum Sciences, said the results ‘show enormous potential’
The researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh (pictured) who developed the system said the timing it takes for the laser to travel from the system to the object and back is ‘around ten times better’ than previous attempts
‘Our system could, for example, capture a detailed 3D image of a suspicious object through smoke or fog, even in the dark. If our system can help the cameras see further and more clearly, this helps keep that area more secure.’
He added that if they were able to provide a ‘remote non-contact method of measuring objects with millimetre-scale accuracy’, their system could be used ‘to map fragile stonework, historical artefacts or facades of listed buildings’.
The researchers, together with the James Watt School of Engineering at the University of Glasgow, tested their sensitive Lidar (light detection and ranging) system, created using an advanced detector developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at three distances – 45 metres (around 150ft), 325m (just over 1,000ft) and one kilometre (around 0.6miles).
At 325m they could create a 3D image of a colleague’s face in what they said was ‘millimetre-scale detail’.
The team’s breakthrough involved being able to measure the time it took for a laser pulse to travel from the system to the object and back with an accuracy of approximately 13 picoseconds – a picosecond being one million millionth of a second.
This timing, the researchers said, is ‘around ten times better’ than previous attempts.
Dr McCarthy said: ‘The timing is really phenomenal. We can distinguish between closely separated surfaces at very long distances.’
