Umbra: mmwave Radar Inverse Pinhole Imaging

Millimeter wave radars are popular for perception in vision-denied contexts due to their compact size. This paper explores emerging use-cases that involve static mount or momentarily-static compact radars to image obejcts leveraging inverse pinholes. Pinhole camera works on the principle that light wave travels in straight line passing through the small aperture. Here, we ask the question of “Can we take advantge of dynamic pinhold placed in front of a radar to enhance its imaging aperture?” This paper presents Umbra, a mmWave high resolution imaging system, that introduces the concept of rotating “inverse pinholes” for angular resolution enhancement.