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Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain

engineering.princeton.edu

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Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain

#51

Post by xijingpooh »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #15

So privacy will evaporate. Imagine dropping millions of these from a drone, carpeting a city. They'd be carried everywhere on clothing, animals, wind. Go to any location and scan for local cameras, download. Privacy will have to be redefined. We've done this lots of times. You hear what goes on behind the bathroom door, you don't say anything, you actually forget it. Because it's not polite to snoop. So in future eve…

They still need means to store or transmit recorded data, a power source. So not that dystopian, but some hotels and airbnbs will certainly be bugged with such tech. You won't see it if it embedded into a wall or a framed picture. Also it's probably quite useful in the automotive sector as well.

Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain

#52

Post by xijingpooh »

anaganisk wrote: post #50
fallat wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What processing can an RFID do? AFAIK RFID can only store and send data, and are pretty "dumb".

I remember watching a docu in Netflix about spies where they show a deice that could record and transmit sound, using same technology.

That's how the Soviets bugged the US embassy in Moscow. With a resonant circuit w/o a power source and a reflected RF beam.

Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain

#53

Post by shrimpx »

sjtindell wrote: post #25
shrimpx wrote: post #6

That 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/

Are we seeing more people on this path where you get tenure (has to be one of the most secure jobs possible) and then launch companies from that foundation? It meshes so well, incredibly competitive though. Perhaps I’m just noticing more.

It sounds like in the case of Felix, he started his company while he was a Ph.D. student.

Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain

#54

Post by trompetenaccoun »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #29
dataflow wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine dropping millions of these from a drone, carpeting a city. Doesn't it still need a source of power?

RFID tags have no power source, and can do significant processing. As others mention, ambient electromagnetic fields can be harvested with a loop antenna.

It's theoretically possible but they'd have to put up antennas all over our cities, emitting ultra high frequency signals. The distance this would work over would be very short as well.

Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain

#56

Post by voxl »

oceanghost wrote: post #26
sytelus wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This usually implies he has great funding sources and very large lab. Being a "powerhouse" as a researcher is probably a different thing.

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.

https://light.princeton.edu/team/ Visiting professor, 3 postdocs, and 9 PhD students, all of very high quality (because, well they're at Princeton).

My guess is each postdoc could produce 1 to 2 papers a year on there own. A PhD student at such a difficult school can probably produce one paper a year once they are in there third year.

14 publications in 2021. Let's guess 6 of which are from postdocs, we'll say 4 of which are from PhD students, leaving us with 4 publications between both professors, or two from each. Of course, this is all very rough estimation.

Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain

#57

Post by fingerlocks »

Imagine 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.

Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain

#58

Post by randomsearch »

shrimpx wrote: post #6

That 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 analogy but “that Einstein publishes 5 PLA papers a year” vs “that dude developed the theory of general relativity” is so revealing.

Don’t mean to pick on you personally, but as the top voted comment it feels like we’re rewarding this harmful perspective on academia. I’d like to say “academia needs to mature” but the problem is actually that it’s gone backwards, and undoing that invasion of management consultant culture and subsequent game playing into a somewhat altruistic and intellectual vocation seems like a very hard problem.

Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain

#59

Post by shrimpx »

voxl wrote: post #56
oceanghost wrote: post #26

Earlier 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.

https://light.princeton.edu/team/ Visiting professor, 3 postdocs, and 9 PhD students, all of very high quality (because, well they're at Princeton). My guess is each postdoc could produce 1 to 2 papers a year on there own. A PhD student at such a difficult school can probably produce one paper a year once they are in there third year. 14 publications in 2021. Let's guess 6 of which are from postdocs, we'll say 4 of w…

The way it likely works is the prof drives the vast majority of idea/IP development and the students do the work under the prof's guidance. Then the prof "frames" the paper and does part of the writing, especially in intro and conclusion sections. These profs likely don't drive any solo projects and don't do any prof-prof collaborations without students involved.

Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain

#60

Post by ei8htyfi5e »

fingerlocks wrote: post #57

Imagine 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.
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