1. Why ‘Media’ in
MIT Media Lab
Why ‘Camera Culture’
Ramesh Raskar, Asso. Prof.,
Camera Culture, MIT Media Lab

2. Processor Network
+
Processor
People
+
Network
+
Processor
Computing Internet
Computing
Social
Computing

3. Processor Network
+
Processor
People
+
Network
+
Processor
Senses , I/o
+
People
+
Network
+
Processor
Computing Internet
Computing
Social
Computing
Sensory
Social
Computing
Augmented
Social
Computing
Process
Human
NW
Sense
Visual
Social
Computing

4. Bits
Photons
Co-Media Lab
Computing Internet
Computing
Social
Computing
Sensory
Social
Computing
Augmented
Social
Computing

5. Emerging
Worlds
Emerging
Tech
Predictable
World
Predictable
Tech
M_L:
last 30
years
M_LABx:
next 30
years

6. Camera Culture: Motivating Questions
• What will a camera/display look like in 20 years?
• How will the next billion cameras change the social culture?
• How can we augment the camera to support best ‘image search’?
• How will portable health diagnostics impact healthcare?
• Will we live mostly in virtual/augmented reality, telepresent?
– TiVo for life?
• How will ultra-high-speed/resolution imaging change us?
• How can we improve ‘trust’ in imaging?
• Can we print anything .. Cars, food, .. babies ..
– (what will make Amazon obsolete)
• What are the opportunities in pervasive recording?
– e.g. GoogleEarth Live
• What will be in Photoshop2030?
• What is the future of movie-making, news reporting, sports viewing?

7. Bits
PhotonHacking
Computer Vision
Optics
Sensors
Visual Social Computing
Computational
Photography
Imaging Research:
Codesign of Optical and Digital Processing
Signal Processing
Computational Light Transport
Displays
Machine Learning
HCI

8. Capture Analyze Share
Capture
Analyze
Share
ViSoCo

9. Camera Culture
Creating new ways to capture and share visual information
MIT Media Lab
Ramesh Raskar
http://cameraculture.info
Facebook.com/cameraculture
1.Light-Field Camera
A new camera design
exploiting the fundamental
dictionary of light-fields for a
single-capture capture of light-
fields with full-resolution
refocusing effects.
2. Color Primaries
A new camera design with
switchable color filter arrays for
optimal color fidelity and
picture quality on scene
geometry, color and
illumination.
3. Flutter-Shutter
A camera that codes the
exposure time with a binary
pseudo-sequence to de-
convolve and remove motion
blur in textured backgrounds
and partial occluders.
4. Compressive Capture
We analyze the gamut of visual
signals from low-dimensional
images to light-fields and
propose non-adaptive
projections for efficient sparsity
exploiting reconstruction.
Computational Photography
1. Looking around corners
Using short laser pulses and fast detector, we aim
to build a device that can look around corners with
no imaging device in the line of sight using time
resolved transient imaging.
2. Reflectance Recovery
We demonstrate a new technique that allows a
camera to rapidly acquire reflectance properties of
objects 'in the wild' from a single viewpoint, over
relatively long distances and without encircling
equipment.
3. Trillion Frames per Second Imaging
A camera fast enough to capture light pulses
moving through objects. We can use such a
camera to understand reflectance, absorption and
scattering properties of materials.
Femtosecond Imaging 3D Displays
1. Tensor Display
A family of compressive light field
displays comprising all architectures
employing a stack of time-
multiplexed, light-attenuating layers
illuminated by uniform or directional
backlighting
2. Layered 3D
Tomographic techniques for image
synthesis on displays composed of
compact volumes of light-
attenuating material. Such
volumetric attenuators recreate a
4D light field or high-contrast 2D
image when illuminated by a
uniform backlight.
3. Glasses-free 3D HDTV
Light field displays with increased
brightness and refresh rate by
stacking a pair of modified LCD
panels, exploiting rank and
constraint of 3D displays
4. BIDI Screen
A thin, depth-sensing LCD for 3D
interaction using light fields which
supports both 2D multi-touch and
unencumbered 3D gestures.
5. Living Windows 6D Display
A completely passive display that
responds to changes in viewpoint
and changes in incident light
conditions.
May 2012

10. 1. Augmented Light Fields
Expands light field representations to
describe phase and diffraction effects
by using the Wigner Distribution
Function
displays by analyzing their operations
and limitations in phase space
3. Ray–Based Diffraction Model
Simplified capture of diffraction model
Post-Doctorial Researchers: Doug Lanman, Gordon Wetzstein, Alex Olwal, Christopher Barsi
Research Assistants: Matthew Hirsch, Otkrist Gupta, Nikhil Naik, Jason Boggess, Everett Lawson, Aydın Arpa, Kshitij Marwah
Visiting Researchers & Students: Di Wu, Daryl Lim
1. Retinal Imaging
With simplified optics and cleaver
illumination we visualize images of
the retina in a standalone device
easily operated by the end user.
2. NETRA/CATRA
Low-cost cell-phone attachments
that measures eye-glass
prescription and cataract information
from the eye.
3. Cellphone Microscopy
A platform for computational
microscopy and remote healthcare
4. High-speed Tomography
A compact, fast CAT scan machine
using no mechanical moving parts or
synchronization.
5. Shield Fields
3D reconstruction of objects from a
single shot photo using spatial
heterodyning.
6. Second Skin
Using 3D motion tracking with real-
time vibrotactile feedback aids the
correct of movement and position
errors to improve motor learning.
Health & Wellness
1. Bokode
Low-cost, passive optical design
so that bar codes can be shrunk
to fewer than 3mm and read by
ordinary cameras several meters
away.
2. Specklesense
Set of motion-sensing
configurations based on laser
speckle sensing . The underlying
principles allow interactions to
be fast, precise, extremely
compact, and low cost.
3. Sound Around
Soundaround is a multi-viewer
interactive audio system,
designed to be integrated into
multi-view displays presenting
localized audio/video channels
with no need for glasses or
headphones.
Human Computer Interaction Visual Social Computing
1. Photocloud
A near real-time system for
interactively exploring a
collectively captured moment
without explicit 3D
reconstruction.
2. Vision Blocks
On-demand, in-browser,
customizable, computer-vision
application-building platform for
the masses. Without any prior
programming experience, users
can create and share computer
vision applications.
3. Lenschat
LensChat allows users to share
mutual photos with friends or
borrow the perspective and
abilities of many cameras.
Light Propagation Theory and Fourier Optics
Visit us online at
Cameraculture.info
fb.com/cameraculture

11. Visual Social Computing

12. Xd
X++
X X+Y
X
X
neXt
How to come up with new ideas?

13. Great Research: Strive for Five
1. Before Five teams
Be first, often let others do details
2. Beyond Five years
What no one is thinking about
3. Within Five layers of ‘Human’ Impact
Relevance
4. Beyond Five minutes of description
Deep, iterative, participatory
5. Fusing Five+ Expertise
Multi-disciplinary, proactive
Ramesh Raskar, http://raskar.info

14. Ramesh Raskar, MIT Media Lab
Pick atleast 2 out of 3
Fun
Cool
Media Coverage
Impact
Money
Social implications
Research
Novelty
Generality
Science

15. What distinguishes ML projects ..
– Synthesize not just analyze
– Use power of human intelligence
• Intelligence Amplification
• Human in loop,
– Democratize, Power to the People
– Be paranoid .. Are we relevant and what is next?
Topics for discussion (create your own group)
• How to pursue 'ideas in the spirit of the media lab'? What is not in the spirit of ML?
• How to make the best of ML resources?
• What are the common problems in picking/initiating/pursuing/finishing great
projects?
• Case studies of successful transitions of efforts into research/demos/products and
more
• Some procedural topics: juggling classes vs research, Apprenticeship vs
independent research, group dynamics, media coverage
Ramesh Raskar, http://raskar.info

16. Be proactive not reactive
Generalize today’s concepts
Avoid basing all on facebook/twitter/kinect etc or today’s hot tech
But we are still slaves to available tech
“Let’s do smart things with stupid technology today, rather than wait and do stupid things with smart
technology tomorrow” - Bill Buxton. You can ofcourse do even smarter things with smart tech.
Be prepared but careful on what you do
Be in optimist but be paranoid (vs pessimist + laidback)
Defer judgment (don’t dismiss, believe or start instantly on any idea)
Overnight success after months of work
Have a list of 10-20 problems .. Don’t work on first one you think or that comes your way
Talk to a lot of people (you trust) to see if worth purusing as most ideas will be useless anyway
Don’t be religious, listen to others
I often find people too much in love with a tiny incremental idea if they came up with themselves
Try and change what is difficult to some other situation which is easily done but is still important
Don’t work on same project for 2+ years
Fail fast
If u want to win .. Be willing change rules of the game, sometimes the game itself
Remember the 4Ps and their SEQUENCE
– Projects > Papers > Polished Demo/Prototype > Press
– (Note ‘polished demo’ comes AFTER a paper or some external validation)
– Don’t chase press before you have a serious project that is peer-reviewed or validated (novelty and
impact should be already understood) Ramesh Raskar, http://raskar.info