Using video, scientists reveal invisible motion, and it’s freaky
http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/using-video-scientists-reveal-invisible-motion-and-its-freaky-20130228/
This is such a cool idea, all the more so because it doesn’t require new cameras or anything. Take the same old video you are already taking, just process the crap out of it an bingo! you can measure changes in air movement (I imagine there is a certain lower bound on temperature difference, though). I wonder if it would work for clear air turbulence; if so it would go a long way toward keeping planes safer. Imagine if you could see up/down drafts in a display as a pilot? You could trivially avoid the moving air masses.
The processing power wouldn’t even have to be on the plane! You could simply beam the video down to a ground station that could do the processing, then beam back the processed image (or not, if there isn’t anything to be concerned with).
I wonder if the M IT algorithms could be coupled with my idea of using genetic programming-based machine learning algorithms to more efficiently detect this sort of thing? I imagine it would help a lot if weather forecasters could actually see the air masses moving. I wonder if they could do the same processing on current satellite images?
This is kind of like Schlieren photography but without the need for mirrors.
