Combining Drones and Augmented Reality to See Through Walls

There are a lot of instances where it would be useful to see through walls, particularly for the military and for emergency first responders. Over the years, there has been plenty of research in that area, but most of it was focused using concepts like acoustic and radio reflection to extrapolate what’s on the other side of a wall. Now a team from Austria’s Graz University of Technology have taken a novel new approach to the problem using drones.

The system takes advantage of an overhead drone that does have a view of the room—or any area—that is obstructed. That’s then stitched together to create a view for someone behind the obstruction. The new view is then sent to a Microsoft HoloLens worn by that person, allowing them to effectively see through the obstruction.

The Microsoft HoloLens, if you’re not familiar, is a mixed-reality headset that combines virtual reality and augmented reality. Someone wearing a HoloLens can see the world around them, and then the headset can alter any or all of that view as necessary. In this case, they can see the obstruction with the unseen area overlaid onto it.

There is obvious potential here, but the drawback is the need for the drone. It’s hard to be covert with a drone buzzing around in the room you’re trying to look into. But, it may work very well for outdoor areas where the drone can be far overhead, or for situations where being covert isn’t important—like rescue.