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MIT Develops Camera-Like Fabric
suraj.sun writes "Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a fabric made of a mesh of light-sensitive fibers that collectively act like a rudimentary camera. The fibers, which each can detect two frequencies of light, produced signals that when amplified and processed by a computer reproduced an image of a smiley face near the mesh. 'This is the first time that anybody has demonstrated that a single plane of fibers, or "fabric," can collect images just like a camera but without a lens,' said Yoel Fink, an associate professor of materials science, who along with colleagues described the approach in a the journal Nano Letters. MIT suggested that the technology, if developed further, could give a soldier a uniform that would help him see threats in all directions. Optical fiber webs, by distributing the chore across a large area, would be less susceptible to damage in one area."
Give me a fabric that mimics the skin of a cuttlefish and I'll be impressed!
BTW, PBS's Nova just had a special on the cuttlefish...amazing creatures.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
When an orange goes bad, it actually rots from the outside in. So when you see a moldy orange at the store, it is possible that the insides are still perfectly fine. But you never get to see the insides of that fruit, much less eat it. What you don't know is, though, just how delicious moldy oranges can be. Like grapes, the oranges get the moisture taken out by the mold, so what's left is an enticingly sweet fruit. But since no one makes wine out of moldy oranges, you'll never know.
But cameras don't rot like that. Why would you write a story about new camera technology and not include the photograph results?
It doesn't have to detect a "threat" and perform complex Identify Friend or Foe logic. All it has to do is trigger some signal that your real eye detects as motion. Your retina, brain, and body can process the rest.
Put another way, if we had evolved with a light sensing organ on the back of our heads that couldn't focus or discern shapes, but could at least give us some sense of motion, we wouldn't complain that it's useless because it's not reliable. It would keep predators from sneaking up on us, and we'd quickly adapt to dealing with the "false positives".
John
This is a camera not a display. It seems it only reads what is around, it cant display anything to mimic it. To repoduce the image on the suit for camo or whatever you would probably have to interweave the camera fabric with a fabric that can display images, but then youd have to be very careful not to fall into some feedback loop.
Of course. I'd love to see what's inside of that burly sergeant's uniform.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Machine washable or Dry Clean Only?
A clothing camera was described by science fiction author George Turner in his 1991 novel Brain Child.
Actually, I wonder if that's true. The only thing that would offer us is notice of an absolutely silent thing moving behind us that is not casting a shadow towards us. If there were already other movement behind us, it wouldn't even provide that.
It seems to me a very small back-mounted camera would provide a lot more info than a full-body fabric-camera that only shows motion.
I think the camo-cloth option is a lot more useful. Camo was never meant to truly conceal, it just does an excellent job of breaking up your lines when you're hiding. If someone is looking your way intently, they're going to see you. It's when they're scanning quickly that they'll miss you. This could do exactly the same, but would always match the colors behind you to create the camo pattern.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Wouldn't do not to reference related work such as the Stanford Camera Array - video here showing the multitude of neat tricks that can be done by processing images from multiple apertures into a single image:
http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/CameraArray/CameraArray.mp4
The advent of inexpensive digital image sensors has generated great interest in building sensing systems that incorporate large numbers of cameras. At the same time, advances in semiconductor technology have made increasing computing power available for decreasing cost, power, and package size. These trends raise the question - can we use clusters of inexpensive imagers and processors to create virtual cameras that outperform real ones? Can we combine large numbers of conventional images computationally to produce new kinds of images? In an effort to answer these questions, the Stanford Computer Graphics Laboratory has built an array of 100 CMOS-based cameras.
Multi-camera systems can function in many ways, depending on the arrangement and aiming of the cameras. In particular, if the cameras are packed close together, then the system effectively functions as a single-center-of-projection synthetic camera, which we can configure to provide unprecedented performance along one or more imaging dimensions, such as resolution, signal-to-noise ratio, dynamic range, depth of field, frame rate, or spectral sensitivity. If the cameras are placed farther apart, then the system functions as a multiple-center-of-projection camera, and the data it captures is called a light field. Of particular interest to us are novel methods for estimating 3D scene geometry from the dense imagery captured by the array, and novel ways to construct multi-perspective panoramas from light fields, whether captured by this array or not. Finally, if the cameras are placed at an intermediate spacing, then the system functions as a single camera with a large synthetic aperture, which allows us to see through partially occluding environments like foliage or crowds. If we augment the array of cameras with an array of video projectors, we can implement a discrete approximation of confocal microscopy, in which objects not lying on a selected plane become both blurry and dark, effectively disappearing. These techniques, which we explore in our CVPR and SIGGRAPH papers (listed below), have potential application in scientific imaging, remote sensing, underwater photography, surveillance, and cinematic special effects.
http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/array/
Many offices, courthouses, etc. ban cameras from the premises. "Excuse me ma'am -- you'll have to take off all your clothes before we'll let you in ... "
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
...a roll-up flatbed scanner.
In "Is There in Truth No Beauty?" (1968), Dr. Jones wears a sensor web to compensate for her blindness.
You may be joking, but I could foresee a fabric that could blend in seamlessly with it's surroundings. Sort of like a chameleon affect.
How do you think they can pull up a camera display from anywhere on the Enterprise? Weave this stuff into the walls.
Oh, wait...
/me adjusts tinfoil hat.
There may be no "I" in team, but there's also no "F" in way.