Although there have been attempts at lensless cameras before, few of them would replace our point-and-shoots when they’re frequently expensive, or capture photos outside of the visible light spectrum. We shouldn’t have either of those problems with Bell Labs’ new prototype. The experiment uses an LCD as a grid of apertures that filter the light reaching a sensor. As that sensor can piece together an image simply by grabbing random aperture samples and correlating the data, it only needs a sliver of the usual information to produce a usable shot. The lens-free, mostly off-the-shelf approach could lower the costs of both the sensor and the overall camera, but it could also lead to simpler comparison tools: the correlation makes it easier to tell if an object is missing, for example. Bell Labs hasn’t talked about any production plans, but we have a hunch that Alcatel-Lucent would rather not let its research wing’s technology go to waste.
Filed under: Cameras, Science, Alt
Source: Cornell University Library
Uh-oh, it looks like both Apple and LG could be in trouble after Alcatel-Lucent’s Multimedia Patent Trust filed a lawsuit against both companies alleging that they infringed upon patents with regards to video compression technology. According to the patent trust’s attorney, Frederick Lorig, it seems that they have given Apple and LG a chance to license their patents but both companies did not do so, while claiming that 33 other companies have already licensed their patents and have paid about $190 million in licenses to date.
