New technology gives AI the power to feel surfaces

Scientists have given artificial intelligence (AI) the capacity to 'feel' surfaces for the first time, opening up a new dimension for deploying the technology in the real world.

- KEUMAR AFIFI-SABET

Tapping into quantum science, the scientists combined a photon-firing scanning laser with a new AI model trained to tell the difference between different surfaces imaged with the lasers. The new technology blasts a series of short light pulses at a surface to 'feel' it, before back-scattered photons, or particles of light, return carrying speckle noise, a type of flaw that manifests in imagery. This is normally considered detrimental to imaging, but in this case the researchers processed the noise artefacts using Al, which enabled the system to discern the topography of the object. "This is a marriage of AI and quantum," said Daniel Tafone of New Jersey's Stevens In