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Liquid Lenses For Camera Phones
Roland Piquepaille writes "In this article, the Register writes that "camera phones will soon have lenses made from nothing more substantial than a couple of drops of oil and water, but will still be capable of auto focusing, and even zooming in on subjects." The lenses, developed by the French company Varioptic, contain drops of oil and water, acting respectively as conductor and insulator, and sandwiched between two windows. These liquid lenses could replace glass or plastic ones because of several advantages: no moving parts, leading to better reliability; a very small power consumption; very small dimensions (diameter: 8mm; thickness: 2mm); and a very fast response time of 2/100th of a second. You can expect the first camera phones using these liquid lenses as early as Christmas 2005. These lenses might also appear in medical equipment, such as endoscopes, optical networking equipment or surveillance devices. This overview contains other details and references."
This company was only founded two years ago, I wonder how much has been put into testing the quality and durability of the oil, which is subject to voltage going through it every now and then. However given the rate people change their mobile phones, durability might not have to be a feature.
Other than that, it's a great invention, no wonder the guy will pursue an aggressive intellectual property strategy, so anyone who wants to build something like this will need a licence from them.
There's also a mentiond of true zoom capability, using two of the liquid lenses. Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of being very small, since you need more depth to create the zooming effect, no?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
When reading the article my main thoughts were "Pretty cool sounding tech..." then I read the final paragraph. I just lost so much enthusiasm for this idea.
Trolling is a art,
Comment removed based on user account deletion
reduce! ack!
With liquid lens and OLEDs, very soon most electronics will be sprayed into place!
2/100ths of a second? That's much faster than those common-as-muck 1/50ths ones.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
Touch that drop of water/oil or expose it to a change in humidity and BANG! You need a portable lens maintenance kit. Imagine having to respond to an error message on the phone by putting drops of fluid into a tine aperture! Or maybe you'd have to send it back...
"The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious." -- Einstein
I love liquid lenses. I often indulge in testing sessions where upon I don my own pair of "liquid lenses" by drinking 8 pints. It's sooo cool how it makes all the ugly chicks look like Jennifer Aniston!
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
I wonder how much he paid for this article.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
rest that mobile phones will replace consumer digital camera... This is a good article to see that they will go a different direction.
Aren't awesome lenses usually more expensive?
Wasn't there a story a while back about glasses that changed their focus by pumping water between two membranes? I think they were being touted as a solution for poor comunities where the users could sort of self diagnose.
Spencer Ogden
Just thinking about the hubble and other spy-sats, this may really be a god send for cheap telescopes. Depending on maximum sizes it should be possible to build a system with parellel cameras. Cheap and accurate.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Unless I'm mistaken (it's been a while), they had oil-based optics in binoculars in Dune. Always cool when a science fiction idea sees real life :)
It's pretty cool that this is coming to pass, even if they're not sandwiched between force fields.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
I wonder how these lens will function in cold or hot weather.
Jeoin
Is this a "freedom lens"?
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
On mobile phone cameras quality is not a huge deal but I am still rather skeptical about use in medical equipment though. Medical stuff needs to be far more precise and hold its precision over a long time. "Hard stuff" like glass will be hard to displace with sqishy lenses.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I have that beat.. The solid glass lens in my Kodak digital camera uses no power at all!
Artificial eyes and camera capable of very fast, accurate focus could be built from these. But they have patented the technology (such as it is) up the ying/yang. What this means is they are now sitting on their duffs, waiting for money to roll in. They technology could be improved and create real breakthroughs...but it's patented, so those good ideas will languish for your great great great great grandchildren. When the patent expires in 2196, the technology will be improved, patented again, and improved again in 2305 when that patent expires. Millions could have benefited from it in the interum, but alas, why improve things when you can patent and stifle?
From my (very, very shallow) understanding of the technology, it sounds like it could do pretty well (in theory, at least) in "prosthetic-eye/lens-type" uses...at least for people with lens-dengenerative issues.
Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'
From the article: "It also has the potential to be made very small. Paillard says that at the moment, the limit is a couple of millimetres, but that the company is researching ways of shrinking the lens further."
Would it then be possible to have a Camera phone that didn't look like a camera phone?
And wouldn't that throw in a whole new set of risk favors for buisness?
Aw man, how are we supposed to boycott cellphones?!
Doh!
When I first started reading the /. article, I thought that this was somehow going to have the benifit that you could defocus the lens using some strange jamming technology so that they could not be used in sensitive places (like locker rooms). But I guess not.
I wonder how Philips feels about it.
Remember the news item about the biodegradable phones?
Water, fuel ane seeds. Drop this one too often and you may end up with daisies poking in your ear.
Meta will eat itself
Refractive indexes are different for different wavelengths. Wouldn't this give a rainbow effect like cheap binoculars? I also wonder about long term stability of the liquids and solid. I could see the images getting cloudy, but I guess not in the life span of a Cell phone. For a new technology, though, it looks promising.
when their owners take them out of the warm store and into the freezing winter air, except for those who purchased their phones in Southern climes.....
I thought they've been using liquid optics for years with lasers. Is this an application of that? Liquid for telescope mirrors is also well known for creating a cheap mirror.
I live in Minnesota, and during the winter, it's not uncommon to have subzero temps. Would you need to worry about the lense freezing? Even worse, becoming damaged if the small amount of liquid were frozen solid.
Aw man, how are we supposed to boycott cellphones?!
Simple. Get married. When your wife runs up your cell phone bill, you'll cancel the account.
There is another recent article on this topic here in the latest issue (Dec 2004) of IEEE Spectrum. From this article it looks like this technology will be commercialized within the next 2-3 years.
...you'll be able to dress a very tiny salad after you call for a rescue.
I wonder how well this oil/water solution will stand up after being in my car's glove compartment for a weekend. I will refrain from any jokes about French heat-wave victims being beta testers last Summer.
I appluad the innovation though.
If you think
I wonder if the technology is similar to what observatory telescopes are using to warp mirrors for atmospheric correction. The difference offhand is the feedback mechanism that sensors provide the telescope to warp its mirror constantly, but it has to adjust very fast, and therefore I just pictured a liquid camera phone lens having a similar viscosity, controlled by similar technology. Now digital cameras with atmospheric correction built in, where you have heterogenous warping of the lens would be neat, so you can take clear pictures through fog and smoke.
Since Mickey Mouse is copyrighted rather than patented, this patent will expire in about 20 years, so we'll be able to buy these in kiddy toys for our grandkids. If Mickey were patented, then it would be patents which run forever, and we would never be able to benefit from patented technology.
See what I've been reading.
Granted, theirs used force fields, but the characters in Dune used oil lenses in their telescopic devices.
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
Therefore, I'm not yet impressed by the claim that this lens can be focused without moving parts. First I'd need to be convinced that it needs to be focused at all, for the intended application.
situation X *does* facilitate a joke involving factors A and B!
*Note: Some assembly required.
What happens when you are using the camera in extreme conditions such as winter outdoor shots? Doesn't water expand when frozen? Busted lens and all your equipment will be greasy!
Live forever, or die trying.
"Awesome lenses and shitty DPI, together at last?"
Yeah! I just don't understand why they don't put 5 megapixel CCDs and 4 gig cards in these little phones.
"Derp de derp."
Wow, that's almost fast enough to photograph the French surrendering.
Tunable Microlens
No idea if they had patents on it. If this French company got there first, these would seem to be very lucrative patents.
As for SciFi being there first, that's hardly an argument we (Geeks) want to see used. If companies can't make money off a technique or concept because a SciFi writer wrote about it abstractly, they will not invest the money needed to create such a technology. We'd have to sit around and wait for some gigantic government initiative like the Space Shuttle to get technology we've long dreamed for. And even then.. it's rarely in a form we can benefit from.
Remeber, its 1% inspiration/ 99% perspiration.
It's gret these SciFi writers inspired our engineers, but the effort that goes in to producing viable products should not remain un-rewarded.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
How is this off topic? It may not be funny, or ever appropriate but off topic? The topic is liquid lenses that will be used in cameras and endoscopy....I hit both.....some days.... }:|
-or so you'd think
www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/Sciences/Physics/Opti cs/OpticalInstruments/Microscope/Leeuwenhoeks/Leeu wenhoeks.htm
The first microscope was based on a water drop lens.
"One of the earliest uses of a simple microscope for examining the minute details of living things was by a Dutch cloth merchant, Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723)."
I wonder if this Paillard is any relation to the Paillard in Paillard-Bolex. For those who aren't as old as me, Paillard used to make the tiny short focus lenses used in 8mm and 16mm cine cameras. Even I can barely remember these, but I had three of them during the 1970s and they were real geek technology of the time.(One was "overclocked" to 100fps to do slow motion shots.) It would be nice if it is the same family and still working on this kind of technology.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Friend: Um.. looks like you pissed ur pants. You: Oh, haha no, my phone just has a leak. Sorry bout that.
Given the jarring hits I've seen some phones take I wonder what that would do to the oil/water barrier. Or perhaps it's just too small with not enough mass to act in the same way as the jar of oil/water analogy.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Looks like their homepage is on its way down.
Here's a Coralized link to varioptic.com.
The concept strikes me as ingenious.
.. I assume those answers will come, if the technology would otherwise work.)
Certainly worthy of patent protection (unlike software patents, of course).
I just wonder how good the lens can be, and whether such technology can ever compete with traditional lenses in the high-end market.
Would it last? The liquids are encased, so I expect that leakage and chemical reaction would not be problems. It would probably have a more limited temperature range than traditional lenses.
Does the droplet naturally form the right shape for a lens? Can it be further shaped by applying different voltages at various places around the diameter?
Could an electric contact lens be made with this technology? (Ignoring issues like how would it be powered, wouldn't it look ugly, or perhaps be too thick, etc
If enough of these questions can be answered "YES", this could be revolutionary.
Even if all answers are "NO", it's quite interesting.
http://technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=52
Somewhere, Frank Herbert is smiling.
I would think that this technology would preform a lot like a LCD screen. That's liquid too. Yeah it will expierence a little weird behavior in extreme cases, but I guess that's the price of luxury.
The liquid lenses will stand up to weather about as well as the phone's LCD screen.
Extreme cold killing a cell phone is nothing new.
With new cellphone-grade oil from Valvoline.
No. You're thinking of copyrights, which have become infinite. Patents only last 20 years. And to complete the trilogy, trademarks last as long as the holder actively enforces them.
Slashdot really needs to add this to the FAQ.
well usually the reason camera phones such shit is the lens, not the image resolution.
why the fuck is parent modded flamebait?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Mr. Wizard did this. I remember him using a droplet of water as magnifying glass. I think he put a drop on a piece of cellophane that he moved over a newspaper. I forget all the details but he was able to get 40x magnification I think. He didn't do the elctric focussing bit.
"brxref
From you sig: I can't believe you take anything the Guardian says seriously. They are horribly biased against Bush. Frankly, you including that link says more about you than it does Bush.
Wait until the patents expire.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
... if I remember anything from chemistry. The article linked to also seems to indicate that the water is used as the conductor, while the oil serves a different function.
Should this be changed in the summary, or is this issue too pedantic?
I saw a similar idea a few weeks ago on a TV show (Next@CNN).
Adaptive Eyecare's adaptive lenses are fluid- filled and the power is changed by varying the amount of fluid in the lens.
The lenses are built into a universal fitting pair of glasses frames, which allow the wearer to adjust the amount of fluid in each lens using a syringe-like device. This results in an individually tuned custom set of corrective vision lenses without an eye-doctor or expensive equipment for vision testing or lens grinding.
From their website: "The starting point for the development of Adaptive Eyecare's technology was the astonishing statistic that according to the World Health Organization there are currently around one billion people - including 10% of school children - in the world who would benefit from vision correction, but are as yet uncorrected. Most of these people live in the developing world, and the problem arises principally because the numbers of personnel trained to deliver vision correction in the conventional way are simply inadequate to meet the needs of the people. These statistics have profound implications - they mean that hundreds of millions of adults do not have the vision correction they need to be socially and economically active, and many children are educationally and socially disadvantaged."
This is a very cool technology that could really change the lives of many disadvantaged people worldwide. I hope that whatever patents are out there do not stifle this sort of use...
As for SciFi being there first, that's hardly an argument we (Geeks) want to see used.
Heinlein claimed that the water bed couldn't be patented because he described exactly how one worked in _Stranger in a Strange Land_. So, there's at least a precedent for such a thing.
He also said that one of the manufacuters sent him a free water bed in thanks.
I always get the shakes before a drop.
Everyone knows that only Americans can invent neat things like this, so prima facie this must be pure hype.
I think you're thinking of copyright and as far as I know a simple improvement to a design does not allow qualify for a new patent.
???
this article references using an oil mount technique for high end drum scanners to eliminate dust and scratches from the scan. Although not entirely related, from the same family of concepts.
Years a go, a company (www.vari-lite.com)that develops robotic automated lighting for rock and roll patented and implemented something similar.
Patent# 5,774,273 "Variable-geometry liquid-filled lens apparatus and method for controlling the energy distribution of a light beam".
This device used a mechnical pump instead of oil, but was eventually discontinued due a number of problems. Inconsistency from day to day do to humidity, air pressure, temperature, leaks etc...
Any substance can be a liquid, it's a matter of melting point vs ambient temperature. In the case of glass it's often argued that it's an amorphous solid as it demonstrates imperceptible fluid/liquid tendancies at common temperatures.
Your camera lense isn't going to flow away in normal temperatures, nor freeze and expand under normal temperature flux. Liquids may, depending on the material used, and it's definately easier for most liquids to escape over time.
Mod parent up, by the way...
Philips announced they were doing it in March. http://optics.org/articles/news/10/3/8/1 At that time they were doing it too.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Not likely : When shaking a jar, most fo the agitation is caused by the air bubbles - much less agitation is possible when there is no air.
As the two liquids are selected with a similar density, I can't see how any agitation could occour.
I guess it'd be "drops per inch" in this case?
Using this for cameras sounds cool, but I want adjustable eyeglasses. I have bifocals and a separate pair of reading glasses. I want something that either automatically focuses on what I'm looking at, or that I can easily adjust, say with a small knob on the side. (My own lenses used to do that for me, but my eyes and I were younger then.)
Obviously we're not there yet, but I'm looking forward to it (though with some difficulty).
FOAD, you git. The Guardian reports from a reality-based world, the same one we engineering types live in.
Note: The UK has stronger libel laws than the US.
I saw them in use on CNN Next a week or three back. They are very round and horn-rimmish, and are focused by the user with an included syringe. The first production runs have gone to third world countries, where opticians are scarce, but myopia still prevails. And where people are more excited about seeing, than being seen, looking cool.
I'm reminded of all of those theories about modern reading lifestyles causing nearsightedness... myopia seems equally as big a problem nonliterate societies.
Whoa, I guess Frank Herbert totally called it on this one. He describes exactly such lenses in Dune. Neat !
>|<*:=
"(My own lenses used to do that for me, but my eyes and I were younger then.)"
There are implantable lenses. Hopefully this technology will make them better. No cataracts, and inflexible lenses.
This is great technology for the medical industry. From making sigmoidoscopies easier to increase the participation in colorectal exams for cancer to endoscopy, this might just make non-invasive surgery and cancer detection a lot easier for people.
Licensing this technology shouldn't be too bad, the demand would make up for it.
"I wonder about the ability of the lens to sustain shock (and not just the kind from bad composition). If you've ever put oil and water in a jar and shaken it you get tiny "bubbles" of oil that don't immediately mix back into the large mass of oil."
Animal cell membranes are made out of oil (triglycerides, with a phostphate group), the fluids surrounding the cell are essentially, water.
When we jump up and down, or do something like that, our bodys cells don't fall apart.
I figure if it's small enough, it's not effected.
yeah thats right. i look like an idiot. just yesterday i splurged all my monies into buying the 20d with canon IS lenses kit. this cost me a bomb.... stupid slashdotter, couldnt you have posted this earlier?
The idea of a liquid lens is not new, but they've done a lot of work to actualy figure out HOW to do it. So long as the patent is not so broad as to aply to the idea it is the perfect example of a GOOD patent. If someone comes up with another, completely different and novel way to make a liquid lens then they could still do it.
This isn't a software or process patent (which IS bad). A lot of capital and research has to go into these kind of inventions. You also have to spend money to manufacture and distribute the invention, so a patent is justified.
What sickens me is when you can patent a few dozen lines of code, or some specific process to achieve some tommon task (one-click internet shopping--woo hoo! Or--no kiding--entertaining your cat with a laser pointer). there is a problem when you can get a couple decades of free-reign over an "invention" that took less time to conjure up than filing the patent application paperwork does.
This was the technology used in the binoculars in the dune (frank herbert). The master has yet again predicted the future. Must be on menange ! shiv
Just imagine: a combined mobile phone, camera and endoscope!
There arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind. (Francis Bacon)
"Samsung is currently shipping 4 million 3-Mpixel camera modules a month ... The company's new camera module, which groups the 3-Mpixel sensor with LEDs and optical devices, takes advantage of Samsung's packaging expertise, Moon said. The module uses a "liquid-lens" mechanism to obtain a 2x to 3x optical zoom. The liquid lens is an electrolytic oil-and-water combination, a convex bubble, which changes its focal length when given a variable voltage. The response time is about 75 milliseconds."i cle.jhtml?articleID=52600845
http://www.commsdesign.com/news/tech_beat/showArt
I doubt they'd do this without investigating patents.
A patent is a contract between an inventor and society. The inventor agrees to disclose all the information that would enable anyone "skilled in the art" to reproduce what he has done. Society agrees to give him a monopoly. That's why "obviousness" and "prior art" is so important: society doesn't want to interfere in the market and get something worthless in return.
Science fiction writers can't in general get patents on their ideas because they don't tell a suitably trained engineer how to create oil-lens binoculars.
Although it isn't always techies that create patents: the Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr invented spread spectrum technology.
At the bottom of the