[HN Gopher] Heat-assisted detection and ranging
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       Heat-assisted detection and ranging
        
       Author : bookofjoe
       Score  : 45 points
       Date   : 2023-08-04 19:24 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
        
       | wpietri wrote:
       | I am very disappointed that unlike radar, lidar, and sonar, this
       | "HADAR" technology is not an active-sensing technology, but just
       | relies on passive IR emissions. I was imagining a car driving
       | around with a big open flame at the front like something out of
       | Mad Max.
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | Somebody is prepping for Burning Man I take it
        
           | wpietri wrote:
           | All I'm saying is that if we're going to have killer robot
           | cars roaming the streets and interfering with firefighters
           | [1], we might as well do it properly.
           | 
           | [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/23/self-
           | driving...
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | Interfering with firefighters is a bit different from
             | driving around and starting fires though, init?
        
         | dharmab wrote:
         | IR floodlights mounted to the front of trucks is a thing.
         | Here's an example with photos of infrared lights used on a
         | smuggling vehicle so the driver could turn the headlights off
         | and drive by night vision: https://youtu.be/a8Q9Yibblbc?t=626
        
       | Arrath wrote:
       | Sounds similar to IRST (Infrared Search & Track) as used in
       | combat aircraft.
        
       | MayeulC wrote:
       | I don't have access, what's the gist? Heat emission then timing
       | combined with thermal imaging? AFAIK, most *AR methods are active
       | and rely on timing, but the abstract mentions passive detection.
        
       | jcims wrote:
       | I can't tell what they are doing. It seems like it's merging
       | visible and thermal imaging to improve segmentation and
       | identification, then looking up the identified objects for
       | ranging. No?
       | 
       | The thermal images in their examples seem to be intentionally
       | using a wide temperature gamut to reduce the contrast in the
       | image (and make it look bad). Most thermal imaging solutions will
       | automatically adjust and give you a much better result.
       | 
       | Regardless I can see lots of benefits of integrating the two as
       | basically another color channel. There's a _lot_ of information
       | available.
        
       | Roguelazer wrote:
       | "Our work leads to a disruptive technology that can accelerate
       | the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) with HADAR-based
       | autonomous navigation and human-robot social interactions."
       | 
       | Really, though?
        
         | cs702 wrote:
         | Jeez... that reads like poorly written PR.
         | 
         | It doesn't belong in academic work, no matter how impressive
         | the authors think it may be.
        
         | jonathankoren wrote:
         | These industrial revolutions are coming faster and faster, and
         | somehow feel less transformative with each unveiling. I only
         | know arguably two. I have no idea what the third, let alone the
         | fourth was.
        
           | mcpackieh wrote:
           | Industrial, chemical, and information.
        
           | ben_w wrote:
           | First: powered tools, mechanised factories, basic but modern
           | chemical processes.
           | 
           | Second: mass production, interchangeable parts, reliable
           | steel, telegraph and other basic uses of electricity.
           | 
           | Third: computers and everything related to them.
           | 
           | Fourth: all the buzzwords and not much substantial at this
           | time -- though when the dust settles, I won't be surprised if
           | at least _a few_ currently popular things are still seen as
           | relevant and not merely flash-in-the-pan cultural artefacts
           | like the 18th Amendment, patent medicine, or Spiritualism.
        
       | nine_k wrote:
       | Most IR cameras work with IR as heat emission. They are useful in
       | the dark, without revealing the camera.
       | 
       | Most optical cameras work with reflected light, not direct
       | emission. The source of light is usually away and at an angle;
       | this allows for shadows, textures, etc.
       | 
       | I don't see why an IR camera can't work the same way as an
       | optical camera, if reflected IR is used; IR photos under e.g.
       | sunlight look fine enough.
       | 
       | Radars or lidars work with their own scanning sources of
       | illumination: microwave, IR, or optical. I wonder if the HADAR
       | uses its own source of IR; if it does, how different it from a
       | LIDAR?
       | 
       | (All these mysteries can be solved for $29, but I'm not yet
       | curious enough.)
        
         | edrxty wrote:
         | As a note, try to avoid using IR to describe LWIR, there are
         | many IR sub bands (NIR, SWIR, MWIR, LWIR) and your phone camera
         | can detect at least one of them.
        
         | _trampeltier wrote:
         | All IR cameras catch also reflected IR. Thats why you have to
         | know the emissivity to calculate the true temperature.
        
           | edrxty wrote:
           | Yeah go play with an LWIR camera of you really want to
           | understand the spectrum. For instance, everything becomes a
           | mirror, you can see yourself standing in front of surfaces
           | that have better than ~5um surface finish (quite rough sheet
           | metal and such) and clouds appear hot-ish because while they
           | are themselves quite cold, they're reflecting LWIR from the
           | ground, hence why overcast nights are much warmer.
        
         | malaya_zemlya wrote:
         | https://hal.cse.msu.edu/assets/pdfs/papers/2023-nature-heat-...
        
           | nine_k wrote:
           | Thanks! This clarifies _a lot._
           | 
           | - They use and combine both optical and LWIR data.
           | 
           | - They are able to split the IR signal into emissive and
           | reflected, and thus measure the temperature.
           | 
           | - Using the spectral information + some ML models, they are
           | able to identify materials, and paint / augment pictures
           | using this information.
           | 
           | That's actually impressive.
        
       | mkoryak wrote:
       | For some pictures
       | 
       | https://github.com/FanglinBao/HADAR
       | 
       | and videos
       | 
       | https://purdue0-my.sharepoint.com/personal/baof_purdue_edu/_...
        
         | Animats wrote:
         | Behind Microsoft paywall.
        
           | cududa wrote:
           | What? I'm not even logged in and can see it. Are you under
           | the impression you need to pay for a GitHub account to view
           | things hosted on it?
        
             | robertlagrant wrote:
             | You don't think they're talking about the sharepoint.com
             | URL?
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | visviva wrote:
       | To me, "ranging" means measuring the range to the target
       | directly, not estimating it from other measurement types
       | (bearings, for example). Can someone explain if that's what the
       | authors are doing here? Is it analogous to stadiametric ranging?
       | I haven't read through this in depth, but I can't figure out what
       | their method is.
        
       | edrxty wrote:
       | Just because nobody made me sign an NDA for this: there are
       | satellite companies using this for finding other satellites in
       | eclipse. It's a pretty brilliant strategy if you want to dock
       | with something and there's no usable visible light. You can make
       | markings that appear clearly in LWIR by making dark parts shiny
       | (see mostly empty space reflected) and light parts matte (see the
       | thermal emissions of the spacecraft)
        
         | visviva wrote:
         | This is a common approach - besides being robust to lighting
         | conditions, it's less sensitive to glinting.
        
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