Imagine pulling smartphone out of your
pocket, taking a snapshot of an object
with its integrated 3D imager or scanner,
sending it to the 3D printer and within
minutes you have reproduced an
accurate replica of the original object.
This feat may soon be possible because
of a new tiny high-resolution 3D imager
developed by researchers at California
Institute of Technology.
The cheap, compact yet highly accurate
new device known as a nanophotonic
coherent imager (NCI) uses inexpensive
silicon chip less than a millimetre square
in size.
The NCI provides the highest depth-
measurement accuracy of any such
nanophotonic 3D imaging device.
"The small size and high quality of this
new chip-based imager will result in
significant cost reductions, which will
enable thousands of new uses for such
systems by incorporating them into
personal devices such as smartphones,"
explained Ali Hajimiri, Thomas G. Myers
professor of electrical engineering.
The new chip uses an established
detection and ranging technology called
LIDAR, in which a target object is
illuminated with scanning laser beams.
The first proof of concept of the NCI has
only 16 coherent pixels, meaning that th
3D images it produces can only be 16
pixels at any given instance.
In the future, Hajimiri said, that the
current array of 16 pixels could also be
easily scaled up to hundreds of
thousands.
The imager could be applied to a broad
range of applications from very precise
3D scanning and printing to helping
driverless cars avoid collisions to
improving motion sensitivity in superfine
human machine interfaces, said the
paper that appeared in the journal Optic
Express.
http://m.gadgets.ndtv.com/cameras/news/new-camera-sensor-could-turn-a-smartphone-into-a-3d-scanner-678187
