After yesterday's news about Nokia
investing in Pelican Imaging's
plenoptic camera system, it was hard not to feel impatient about exactly when this technology might arrive in real, commercially available smartphones. Well, we have an update on that front: although the company's CEO, Chris Pickett, wouldn't tell us which OEM(s) he's been talking to, he did say that his product is currently being trialed by device manufacturers and is scheduled to be part of at least one new smartphone launching in 2014. Now, this next bit is pure speculation on our part, but given that carrier testing alone can take six months, and we're already nearly halfway through 2013, this strongly implies that a hardware deal has already been inked -- which means next year could potentially bring the biggest news in smartphone cameras since the eternally underappreciated
Nokia PureView 808. Speaking of which, Pelican Imaging also has some intriguing things to say about what could happen if its array camera was paired with Nokia's
PureView technology -- read on for more.
from Engadget by Terrence O'Brien
Technologists have been drawing
inspiration from the insect world for a long time. And folks working on robotics really seem to love their
creepy-crawlies and
buzzing arthropods. Researchers at the University of Illinois are looking to our eight-legged planet mates, not for mobility lessons, but as a reference for a new camera design. The system mimics the vision of bees and mantises by combining multiple lenses on a half hemisphere to provide a 180-degree view with a nearly infinite depth of field. The optics themselves are described as "soft, rubbery" and each individual microlens is paired with its own photodiode. The work gets us a heck of a lot closer to the dream of a digital fly eye than
previous efforts, though we're likely still quite a while from seeing applications outside of the lab. DARPA funding suggests the artificial
compound eyes may have a future in surveillance, though the researchers also see uses for it in medicine.
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