Acoustic Non-Line-Of-Sight Imaging

Abstract

Non-line-of-sight (NLOS) imaging enables unprecedented capabilities in a wide range of applications, including robotic and machine vision, remote sensing, autonomous vehicle navigation, and medical imaging. Recent approaches to solving this challenging problem employ optical time-of-flight imaging systems with highly sensitive time-resolved photodetectors and ultra-fast pulsed lasers. However, despite recent successes in NLOS imaging using these systems, widespread implementation and adoption of the technology remains a challenge because of the requirement for specialized, expensive hardware. We introduce acoustic NLOS imaging, which is orders of magnitude less expensive than most optical systems and captures hidden 3D geometry at longer ranges with shorter acquisition times compared to state-of-the-art optical methods. Inspired by hardware setups used in radar and algorithmic approaches to model and invert wave-based image formation models developed in the seismic imaging community, we demonstrate a new approach to seeing around corners.