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Surprising Science

Pentagon Wants Terminator Vision

No more will soldiers’ vision be limited to the socket-embedded spheres that God intended. The Pentagon wants troops to see dangers coming at them from all directions.

In a solicitation released today, Darpa, the Pentagon’s far-out research branch, unveiled the Soldier Centric Imaging via Computational Cameras effort, or SCENICC. Imagine a suite of cameras that digitally capture a kilometer-wide, 360-degree sphere, representing the image in 3-D onto a wearable eyepiece. You’d be able to literally see all around you, including behind yourself, and zooming in at will, creating a “stereoscopic/binocular system, simultaneously providing 10x zoom to both eyes.” And you would do this all hands-free, apparently by barking out or pre-programming in a command—the solicitation leaves it up to a designer’s imagination—when needing to adjust focus.


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