The goal of the MIT Media Lab is to integrate this technology into self-driving cars so that vehicles can avoid obstacles even in inclement weather.
This type of image sensing system uses 'flying time' camera technology, which emits short laser pulses to objects and then measures the time required for the laser to return from the object.
Fog usually disperses the laser, making it difficult for self-driving cars to recognize the road ahead. But researchers have developed an algorithm that can find patterns in scattered light to show obstacle distances.
At the Camera Culture Group at the MIT Media Lab, researchers tested the system in a simulated dense fog environment that was much thicker than the fog that the car encountered in real environments.
The test results show that the performance of the system is much better than the human eye observation, but most of the previous imaging systems performed much worse in this environment.
A navigation system that can handle dense fog obstacles comparable to human drivers will be a huge breakthrough for self-driving cars.