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New Flexible Image Sensors Could Enable Eyeball-Cams, More Realistic Cyborgs
Posted by John Mahoney at 12:30 PM on August 7, 2008
Traditional camera lenses have to have beefier optics to make up for the fact that the sensor is flat--but one reason why the human eye is such an efficient little cam at (576 megapixels! ISO 800!) is because our image sensors (err, retinas) are rounder to better capture the light transmitted by the lens on the other side of the sphere. Researchers at Northwestern and U. Chicago have found a way to create a traditional photo sensor that flexes without breaking, which means your cyborg glass eye of the future will be all the more lifelike.
The system works by linking the individual pixels of the sensor with flexible wires, which allow the sensor itself to take any shape necessary. This will result in more efficient and compact lenses for endoscopes and, potentially, the aforementioned artificial eyes. Right now the biggest sensor they've made only has 256 pixels, but apparently the manufacturing process is similar to current sensors so the researchers are confident they can scale it up quickly. [Medgadgets]
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
Git Em SteveDave displays attention-grabbing vanity
Posted 1:08 PM 7/8/08
Is this the same tech I heard about that will also make cheap, eventually very powerful microscopes? From what the interview I heard on NPR said, they could make a passive microscope in every cell phone that could scan for dangers.
Git Em SteveDave displays attention-grabbing vanity
DisposableInterloper
Posted 12:48 PM 7/8/08
So does this mean the iPhone is getting a prosumer-grade camera?
DisposableInterloper
radeon21
Posted 12:43 PM 7/8/08
New Flexible Image Sensors Could Enable Eyeball-Cams, More Effective Spellcheckers
radeon21
K-SO
Posted 12:40 PM 7/8/08
so are camera lenses gunna be like jelly now?
K-SO
Ariel_Wollinger
Posted 2:08 PM 7/8/08
from the web:
One of the possible models of the human visual system (HVS) in the computer vision literature has a high resolution fovea and exponentially decreasing resolution periphery. The high resolution fovea is used to extract necessary information in order to solve a vision task and the periphery may be used to detect motion. To obtain the desired information, the fovea is guided by the contents of the scene and other knowledge to position the fovea over areas of interest. These eye movements are called saccades and corrective saccades. A two stage process has been implemented as a mechanism for changing foveation in log polar space. Initially, the open loop stage roughly foveates on the best interest feature and then the closed loop stage is invoked to accurately iteratively converge onto the foveation point. The open loop stage developed for the foveation algorithm is applied to saccadic eye movements and a tracking system. Log polar space is preferred over Cartesian space as: (1) it simultaneously provides high resolution and a wide viewing angle; and (2) feature invariance occurs in the fovea which simplifies the foveation process.
Ariel_Wollinger
Ariel_Wollinger
Posted 1:58 PM 7/8/08
here:
[www.clarkvision.com]
Ariel_Wollinger
Ariel_Wollinger
Posted 1:56 PM 7/8/08
@K-SO: gonna...
I don;t think the eye has 576 megapixels. We only have high res in the fovea area, the rest of the eye has lesse resolution, which decreases exponentially from the fovea outwards.
Ariel_Wollinger
Ariel_Wollinger
Posted 2:27 PM 7/8/08
this is also fantastic:
[www.win.tue.nl]
Ariel_Wollinger
Ariel_Wollinger
Posted 2:14 PM 7/8/08
more on the subject. great article explaining the resolution:
[hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu]
Ariel_Wollinger
Pablos102030
Posted 3:53 PM 7/8/08
The eye is 576 megapixels!? Hot damn! Too bad it only has like half a gig of storage built in. That could be fixed of course with an SD port, but alas, it doesn't even have usb support. What a ripoff. I've even heard some peoples eyes even come out of the box broken.
Pablos102030
shanzi
Posted 4:10 PM 7/8/08
This is gonna be great.
shanzi
ancker
Posted 7:54 PM 7/8/08
How'd you get U. Chicago? The article doesn't mention it at all. In fact it went out of its way to say "University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign."
I can see how you might get "University of Illinois at Chicago" confused with the University of Chicago, but how'd you turn "Urbana-Champaign" into Chicago?
(U. Chicago isn't part of the "University of Illinois" system.)
ancker
sdsviet
Posted 1:05 AM 8/8/08
yea U.Chicago as in university of chicago. they are definately not part of the university of illinois system. but University of Illinois at Chicago is, which is UIC. University of Illinois Urbana Champaign which is UIUC.
UIUC FTW. its my alma mater.
sdsviet
gloveofpower
Posted 1:59 AM 8/8/08
Sweetness. I'm gonna need me some bionic eyes when I turn 65 so keep working on this!
gloveofpower
Killjoy
Posted 4:29 AM 8/8/08
"...our image sensors (err, retinas) are rounder to better capture the light..."
...and then split it like an infinitive into its component colors.
Pretty cool tech, though. As noted above, it seems as if the human eye only has high resolution at the very center of one's field of vision, and the resolution degrades rapidly as you move from the center to the periphery. If this tech becomes well-developed, our robot overlo - err, those who must not be named will have ridiculously better vision than we do. Hopefully the infrared hat trick will still work.
Killjoy
NonaLlama
Posted 3:38 AM 11/8/08
If a curved sensor, like the retina, is better at image gathering why don't cameras have a curved sensor? You don't need it to be flexible; it could just be permanently curved. What am I missing here?
NonaLlama