If you take a look at the paper it is only about the optics. Which is still a big achievement, but I think the complete system is a little bit bigger than a grain of salt. So the article should be taken with a grain of salt as well.
Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
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Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know nothing about this person, but if his case is the average, he's probably got a lot of grad students doing the actual work. I can't tell you how many papers/patents I wrote only to be listed as the 5th contributor or some such thing.
I'd love to see a paper looking at this (e.g., how often is the "primary" author the last author or is the last author a better predictor of quality than the first, if you look back historically). I suspect this is very widespread issue.
If you look at the linked list of papers, the prof usually appears at the end of the list. That's common in computing fields.
Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
#63Imagine a matrix of tightly-packed pixel sized micro-cameras opposite of a similarly sized LED screen. You could project the camera image on the screen and make the entire object appear roughly invisible. If we had a full body suit made of tiny cameras behind translucent LEDs, could we have invisibility/cloaking suits? Is this remotely feasible with current technology? Serious question.
For invisibility to work like that for more than one viewing angle you would need to add the initial number of pixels for each angle you want to support. So it’s unlikely to work even at small sizes. So 10 angles, you’d need 10x the original number of pixels.
With facial detection and one observer, we could orient our projection as the viewing angle changes. It wouldn’t be true invisibility, but maybe at best a Predator-style fuzzy cloak?
Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
#64Imagine a matrix of tightly-packed pixel sized micro-cameras opposite of a similarly sized LED screen. You could project the camera image on the screen and make the entire object appear roughly invisible. If we had a full body suit made of tiny cameras behind translucent LEDs, could we have invisibility/cloaking suits? Is this remotely feasible with current technology? Serious question.
For invisibility to work like that for more than one viewing angle you would need to add the initial number of pixels for each angle you want to support. So it’s unlikely to work even at small sizes. So 10 angles, you’d need 10x the original number of pixels.
This works for very narrow FOVs, though.
E.g. a stealth aircraft can absorb the radar signal, analyze its direction (using a phased antenna array) and send back a "reflection from earth" with a proper delay. This renders the aircraft effectively invisible to the radar, provided that the covering of the aircraft indeed does not reflect much back.
Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
#65The article keeps saying "camera", but we only see the lens. How big is the sensor and cabling?
Yes, I had the same question. But if the lens miniaturised so does the rest. Imagine swallowing this and getting picturs of your inside of body in a smart phone.
There is a diffraction limit, which is not very small for visible light. Making a pixel grid that would resolve very tiny details may be hard.
OTOH the light sensor needs not be as small. Imagine a thin optical fiber with such a lens on one end, and a large lens and large enough camera on the other end. In could immediately make a better and less invasive endoscope, e.g. for surgery.
Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
#66If you take a look at the paper it is only about the optics. Which is still a big achievement, but I think the complete system is a little bit bigger than a grain of salt. So the article should be taken with a grain of salt as well. https://light.princeton.edu/publication/neural-nano-optics/
> I think the complete system is a little bit bigger than a grain of salt.
How much bigger, does anyone know or can estimate?
Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
#67That guy Felix Heide is a research powerhouse. He and his group published 4 papers in SIGGRAPH 21, 7 papers in CVPR 21 and 6 papers in CVPR 2020, wow. https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~fheide/
I know nothing of his work, and he may well be an excellent researcher, but the use of “number of papers published” as a proxy for the quality of someone’s research is one of the biggest problems in academia. What matters is the precise nature of a researcher’s work, which is a qualitative measure that cannot be summarised with a simplistic metric. It’s so odd that we even discuss such things; it’s an overused analog…
The parent post used the number of papers at the top conferences in their respectives fields.
It means they are unquestionably pushing the state of art fowards. Or the system is completely broken.
I see your point though. This is a recurrent discussion.
I think the change of paradigm was positive. Nowadays, papers are published in interactive and incremental way, instead of, doing a parallel with software engineering, with the waterfall methodology.
Publising the research incrementally allows more people to get involved, create more branches, and spot errors earlier.
In sofware developement, the change of the process lead to huge advanvements. I believe this is also true for academia.
Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
#68Imagine a matrix of tightly-packed pixel sized micro-cameras opposite of a similarly sized LED screen. You could project the camera image on the screen and make the entire object appear roughly invisible. If we had a full body suit made of tiny cameras behind translucent LEDs, could we have invisibility/cloaking suits? Is this remotely feasible with current technology? Serious question.
For invisibility to work like that for more than one viewing angle you would need to add the initial number of pixels for each angle you want to support. So it’s unlikely to work even at small sizes. So 10 angles, you’d need 10x the original number of pixels.
And even if we somehow made the physics work for the actual displays, I can't even fathom how much computing power you'd need to push all those pixels around to make it look realistic.
Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
#69I thought metasurfaces were limited to handling a single wavelength, but this claims to be capable of full colour images. Anyone have a handle on how that works?
Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know nothing about this person, but if his case is the average, he's probably got a lot of grad students doing the actual work. I can't tell you how many papers/patents I wrote only to be listed as the 5th contributor or some such thing.
I'd love to see a paper looking at this (e.g., how often is the "primary" author the last author or is the last author a better predictor of quality than the first, if you look back historically). I suspect this is very widespread issue.