Wouldn’t it be great if we can use phones to 3D scan every day objects for printing? A research team from Caltech has designed a cheap and tiny camera chip that could make that happen. Even better, the team claims it can take 3D scans so precise, it could lead to “replica[s] accurate to within microns of the original object[s].” The silicon chip called nanophotonic coherent imager (NCI) is less than a millimeter square, so it can fit within actual phones or cameras without the need for extra hardware. It can capture an object’s height, depth and width using tiny LIDARs that immerse an object in laser beams. The light that bounces off the object is then analyzed to determine its size and other details.
via Engadget
