Eyes inside

Knowing what or who is behind a closed door or in an unseen area can mean the difference between life and death for police and first responders. This summer, police departments nationwide will, literally, get their hands on a technology that they can lob into an unseen area and get a real-time picture of what’s going on inside.

Bounce Imaging’s Explorer is a softball-sized rubber sphere containing a camera with six lenses mounted Argus-like around its circumference. When remotely activated using a smartphone or tablet, the Explorer takes dozens of photos. It then transmits the images back to the mobile device where software instantly “stitches” them together into full panoramic images.

“It basically gives a quick assessment of a dangerous situation,” said Bounce Imaging CEO Francisco Aguilar, who invented the device.

Aguilar started working on the Explorer idea after the 2010 Haiti earthquake while he was an MBA student at MIT. He learned that search and rescue personnel were using cumbersome fiber-optic cameras that couldn’t easily find survivors trapped in the rubble.

“I started looking into low-cost, very simple technologies to pair with your smartphone, so you wouldn’t need special training or equipment to look into these dangerous areas,” Aguilar said.

After Explorer won the Boston-based startup incubator MassChallenge’s 2012 grand prize, Aguilar started receiving numerous requests from police departments, which became his target market.

After months of field testing prototypes with police departments across New England, Aguilar learned to keep the design simple. Police are under so much pressure in dangerous situations that they need something easy to use.

“We had loaded the system up with all sorts of options and buttons and nifty things,” recalled Aguilar. “But really, they just wanted a picture.”

Innovative history

American history is also a history of technological innovation. On July 4, the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History celebrated that history by reopening its west wing with a new exhibit on American innovation.

The exhibit, titled “Inventing in America,” features inventors and inventions from Eli Whitney and the cotton gin to Ralph Baer, known as the father of the home video game.

Visitors will be able to see parts from the very first 1976 Apple computer, as well as the artist canvas stretcher that Samuel Morse converted into his first telegraph receiver. An industrial innovation display explains that Coca-Cola had to modify its original 1915 bottle design to narrow the top because the bottle was unstable on conveyor belts.

The exhibit is ongoing. —M.C.

Selfie identification

The popularity of fingerprint scanning on smartphones is encouraging technology companies to experiment with even more innovative forms of biometric security.

This fall, MasterCard plans to launch a pilot program in which participants can approve purchases at checkout simply by staring into their phones and blinking once. Facial recognition software on the phone converts the image into a unique code and transmits it over the internet to MasterCard. Blinking to initiate the scan prevents thieves from holding up a picture of you to fool the system, according to a report on CNN Money.

The experiment will be limited to 500 customers who will download a special app giving them the option to use either a fingerprint or a facial scan. “The new generation, which is into selfies ... I think they’ll find it cool,” Ajay Bhalla, a security expert at MasterCard told CNN Money. “They’ll embrace it.” —M.C.