Camera that can recognise you in the dark... from half a mile away - even at night or through smoke or fog

It sounds like a scenario straight out of a sci-fi movie. But researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh have developed a new light detection system that can recognise human faces and objects from more than half a mile away – even at night or through smoke or fog. Scientists say the ground-breaking research could be a'step change' for security and defence and has the potential to'make identification significantly easier'. Using pulses of laser light to measure the distances to objects, the system can construct'high-resolution 3D images' of faces and other surfaces from as far away as ten football pitches in both daylight and darkness. Dr Aongus McCarthy, an optical scientist and research fellow at Heriot-Watt's Institute of Photonics and Quantum Sciences, said: 'If someone is standing behind camouflage netting, this system has the potential to determine whether they are on their mobile phone, holding something, or just standing there idle.'