Developed with technology created by researchers at the University of Washington and manufactured by OmniVision Technologies, the OmniVision OV6948 has been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s smallest commercially available image sensor. How small is the camera? Just 0.65 x 0.65 x 1.158 mm, or roughly the size of a grain of sand! Great, now I’ll never be able to find my camera on vacation.
This nano camera is built on a metasurface made out of 1.6 million cylindrical posts that work just like a camera sensor. Each of these posts acts as an optical antenna that receives light and shapes the optical wavefront.
The minuscule camera is capable of capturing 200 x 200 resolution images (40,000 pixels) at 30FPS. For reference, a Gameboy screen is 160 x 144, so it’s better than that AND in full color. Sure, it’s not HD, but the camera was designed to fit inside HUMAN VEINS to aid doctors during diagnosis and surgery. What it lacks in high definition, it more than makes up for in being able to fit absolutely anywhere.
The optical sensor is made from 1.6 million cylindrical posts that each receive light and requires a custom algorithm to process images, which in their raw form are blurry (seen above before and after processing). Technology! Next stop a subatomic camera.
[via Laptop-Spec]
