Now, portable device that can 'see through walls'

Sydney, June 12 (ANI): A group of students from an Australian University have built a portable device that has the ability to see through walls and other solid objects, in real-time.

Students of University of Wollongong, Alex Seng, Matthew Kitchener, Wenbin Shao, Jie Yang and Yhenxin Feng's work on the aptly-named Compressed Sensing Imager, or CSI, recently gained them a national innovation award.

While other systems to see through walls and other solid objects have existed, the UOW team's solution offers the benefit of portability, with the whole system being able to be packed into a container the size of a briefcase and carried or mounted on a vehicle.

Yang said that the CSI could save lives some day, with emergency services being able to use it to spot survivors trapped beneath rubble or to differentiate between hostages and their captors.

"For resource exploration and infrastructure maintenance, the system can also reveal underground objects non-intrusively," the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Yang as saying.

The system also has a range of military uses, with soldiers being able to quickly determine friend from foe.

The Software that has been designed by these students also makes it easier for operators to understand and act on the information the system gathers, which is delivered in real-time, unlike other systems which can only deliver an image every few minutes.

The team collaborated with Universities in the US and have created prototypes, with plans to commercialise the technology soon. (ANI)