Ultra Compact Camera

Scientific ingenuity means cameras keep on getting smaller and smaller, and the latest to appear is not only incredibly tiny – the same size as a grain of salt – it's also able to produce images of much better quality than a lot of other ultra-compact cameras.

Using a technology known as a metasurface, which is covered with 1.6 million cylindrical posts, the camera is able to capture full-color photos that are as good as images snapped by conventional lenses some half a million times bigger than this particular camera.

And the super-small contraption has the potential to be helpful in a whole range of scenarios, from helping miniature soft robots explore the world, to giving experts a better idea of what's going on deep inside the human body.

Existing micro-sized camera (left) versus the new model (right). (Princeton University)

"It's been a challenge to design and configure these little microstructures to do what you want," says computer scientist Ethan Tseng from Princeton University in New Jersey.

"For this specific task of capturing large field of view RGB images, it was previously unclear how to co-design the millions of nano-structures together with post-processing algorithms."

One of the camera's special tricks is the way it combines hardware with computational processing to improve the captured image: Signal processing algorithms use machine learning techniques to reduce blur and other distortions that otherwise occur with cameras this size. The camera effectively uses software to improve its vision.  READ MORE...