CAMERA RESOLUTION TRIPLES
Digital cameras sporting light sensor chips with three times the normal resolution go on sale later this year. The high-resolution sensor is based on technology developed by Silicon Valley firm Foveon, which until now has only used the system in professional cameras costing thousands of dollars. Polaroid is now bringing Foveon鈥檚 technology to the consumer market.
Conventional digital cameras record images using a mosaic of colour filters superimposed on an array of light-sensitive pixels in a charge-coupled device (CCD) chip. The filters allow only one colour to pass to each pixel. So three pixels are needed to record the colour at a particular spot.
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Foveon鈥檚 technology relies on the fact that light penetrates silicon to a depth that depends on its wavelength 鈥� blue light hardly passes the surface, green penetrates a bit further, while red penetrates relatively deeply.
By using stacked sensors to measure the light reaching different depths, a single silicon pixel can record all three colours 鈥� tripling the resolution and producing richer colours for the same size of sensor chip.
The Polaroid x530, incorporating this technology, will be available in the US in June at a cost of around $400.
ID TAGS HELP ROBOTS WASH DISHES
Robots used to need expensive image analysis systems to recognise even simple objects in the real world. But not any more. They can now be made without expensive computer power if every object they need to recognise is labelled with a radio frequency ID (RFID) tag 鈥� a silicon chip that broadcasts its identity.
To prove this, robotics engineers in Japan last week programmed a wheeled robot to load a dishwasher with delicate items of crockery. The items had all been labelled with washable RFID tags that broadcast 鈥減late鈥�, 鈥渃up鈥� or 鈥渂owl鈥�. The robot successfully recognised every piece and used its arm and gripper to place each piece carefully in the right compartment in a dishwasher.
鈥淏efore we used RFID tags we had too many problems getting robots to recognise objects,鈥� says Kohtaro Ohba, who programmed the dish-washing robot at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science & Technology in Tsukuba. He says the research could influence the development of more sophisticated, more affordable domestic robots.
