Speaking of Fresnel lenses, one of the coolest applications is a plastic "wide-angle lens" sticker that you could affix to your car's rear window (https://www.amazon.de/-/en/WIDE-ANGLE-WINDOW-FRESNEL-OPTICAL...) to increase the field of view. Their popularity has dropped since the advent of "back-up cameras" however.
Flat lenses made of nanostructures transform tiny cameras and projectors
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Re: Flat lenses made of nanostructures transform tiny cameras and projectors
#12[deleted]
Re: Flat lenses made of nanostructures transform tiny cameras and projectors
#13This article describes how nano metalenses work and what they can be used for. Spoiler alert: they can't be used to replace your smartphone's camera lenses yet, but can be used for IR distance sensors used on drones and soon, polarization sensors that will be able to tell materials apart and even detect cracks in concrete.
One step closer to a tricorder.
Re: Flat lenses made of nanostructures transform tiny cameras and projectors
#14Thin, frenzel-free VR goggles in the future then?
Seems like one of the obvious applications. I wonder why it isn't mentioned. Is there a technical limitation that make it impractical? Size maybe, the lens shown in the article are all tiny and I guess lens that would be practical for AR/VR would be really expensive.
Re: Flat lenses made of nanostructures transform tiny cameras and projectors
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
AI-equipped cars with a real sense of feeling in their tires. It’ll be like the sensation of touch for them. Everything they run over, they will feel. Make them learn that animals feel gross to touch. Make them feel remorse for running over a human. Boom! Self-driving safety solved!
This opens the door to kinky AI
Yeah that’s exactly what we need.
An AI that calls us “daddy”
That can’t possibly go wrong. Nope.
Re: Flat lenses made of nanostructures transform tiny cameras and projectors
#16When will we get thick spectacles in impressively thin format?
Re: Flat lenses made of nanostructures transform tiny cameras and projectors
#17This reminded of salt grain size cameras
https://engineering.princeton.edu/news/2021/11/29/researcher...
Re: Flat lenses made of nanostructures transform tiny cameras and projectors
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if this has applications for sensing in self-driving cars.
AI-equipped cars with a real sense of feeling in their tires. It’ll be like the sensation of touch for them. Everything they run over, they will feel. Make them learn that animals feel gross to touch. Make them feel remorse for running over a human. Boom! Self-driving safety solved!
> feeling in their tires.
Ignoring the rest...
I feel like this would be much easier to accomplish with acoustic sensors and wheel/suspension telemetry, given that an attentive human driver can sort of "feel" the road surface already.
Re: Flat lenses made of nanostructures transform tiny cameras and projectors
#19This article describes how nano metalenses work and what they can be used for. Spoiler alert: they can't be used to replace your smartphone's camera lenses yet, but can be used for IR distance sensors used on drones and soon, polarization sensors that will be able to tell materials apart and even detect cracks in concrete.
[deleted]
Re: Flat lenses made of nanostructures transform tiny cameras and projectors
#20This article describes how nano metalenses work and what they can be used for. Spoiler alert: they can't be used to replace your smartphone's camera lenses yet, but can be used for IR distance sensors used on drones and soon, polarization sensors that will be able to tell materials apart and even detect cracks in concrete.
[deleted]