Called HoloRadar, the system enables robots, autonomous vehicles to reconstruct three-dimensional scenes outside their direct line of sight.
Researchers have developed a new system that could help improve safety of driverless cars . The system lets robots see around corners using radio waves processed by AI.Developed by Penn Engineers, the system could improve safety of robots operating in cluttered indoor settings like warehouses and factories.
Called HoloRadar, the system enables robots to reconstruct three-dimensional scenes outside their direct line of sight, such as pedestrians rounding a corner. Unlike previous approaches to non-line-of-sight perception that rely on visible light, HoloRadar works reliably in darkness and under variable lighting conditions.Capability to help robots, autonomous vehicles make safer decisions“Robots and autonomous vehicles need to see beyond what’s directly in front of them,” says Mingmin Zhao, Assistant Professor in Computer and Information Science and senior author of a paper describing HoloRadar, presented at the 39th annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems . “This capability is essential to help robots and autonomous vehicles make safer decisions in real time.”At the heart of HoloRadar is a counterintuitive insight into radio waves. Compared to visible light, radio signals have much longer wavelengths, a property traditionally seen as a disadvantage for imaging because it limits resolution. Zhao’s team realized that, for peering around corners, those longer wavelengths are actually an advantage, according to a press release.HoloRadar reconstructs what lies beyond direct view“Because radio waves are so much larger than the tiny surface variations in walls,” said Haowen Lai, a doctoral student in CIS and co-author of the new paper. “Those surfaces effectively become mirrors that reflect radio signals in predictable ways.”Researchers also highlighted that in practical terms, this means that flat surfaces like walls, floors and ceilings can bounce radio signals around corners, carrying information about hidden spaces back to a robot. HoloRadar captures these reflections and reconstructs what lies beyond direct view.“It’s similar to how human drivers sometimes rely on mirrors stationed at blind intersections,” says Lai. “Because HoloRadar uses radio waves, the environment itself becomes full of mirrors, without actually having to change the environment.”HoloRadar augments the safety of autonomous robots by complementing existing sensors rather than replacing them. While autonomous vehicles already use LiDAR, a sensing system that uses lasers to detect objects in the vehicles’ direct line of sight, HoloRadar adds an additional layer of perception by revealing what those sensors cannot see, giving machines more time to react to potential hazards, as per the release.HoloRadar was tested on a mobile robot in real indoor environments, including hallways and building corners. In these settings, the system successfully reconstructed walls, corridors and hidden human subjects located outside the robot’s line of sight.Future work will explore outdoor scenarios, such as intersections and urban streets, where longer distances and more dynamic conditions introduce additional challenges.
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