research poster homework

On Friday, I went and checked out the 3D shape measurement with digital binary defocusing techniques.  The research was done by people in the mechanical engineering and the mathematics departments.  Their research was about 3D shaping, which is a technology that uses waves to map a 3 dimensional area.  At its basic form, it essentially sends out waves, they can radio to gamma rays, and then there is a receiver that will get all the waves back and figure out how long it took the waves to reach a spot and return.  The computer system  knows that since it took this wave longer then it must be farther away and thus maps accordingly.  The focus of the research was how binary defocusing helps this process.  Binary defocusing is when you have a wave that uses a 1 bit system to track the formations in the mapping process.  This way the information that is being sent back is much simpler so the computer processes it faster.  Although because they are using waves that carry less energy to keep it simple, they also have the problem of having less information or more information loss.  There are still many problems with this technology and they said that they have to still adapter other technologies to get results.  It still is a step forward because it allows for faster mapping, and ground surveying.  They hope that by simplifying the imaging technology they can speed it up and still get the same if not better results.  While the technology is above my pay grade, I still can appreciate the application that it might have in potential military uses and general surveillance.  Being able to make the invisible,visible is a huge task in general.  It allows us to look at things we would normally be flying blind into.  This could protect more militants as well as uses of national security because we could now survey the ground of hostile enemies.  Overall, this technology is still under research but it will soon prove useful in application.