Device thousands of times thinner than a human hair imitates vision

New research published in Advanced Functional Materials has described a tiny device that mimics human vision.

Scientists from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) outline how the single chip – thousands of times thinner than a human hair – is capable of capturing, processing and storing visual information.

Professor Sumeet Walia highlighted that performing all of these functions on a single small device has been challenging until this point.

“We’ve made real-time decision making a possibility with our invention, because it doesn’t need to process large amounts of irrelevant data and it’s not being slowed down by data transfer to separate processors,” he said.

The research team copied the properties of the retina in the process of developing the neuromorphic invention.

“The human eye is exceptionally adept at responding to changes in the surrounding environment in a faster and much more efficient way than cameras and computers currently can,” Walia said.

“Taking inspiration from the eye, we have been working for several years on creating a camera that possesses similar abilities,” he added.

Main image: Professor Sumeet Walia, left, and PhD researcher, Aishani Mazumder perform a demonstration.