Often it is Nature itself that gives us the most brilliant ideas. Take the human eye, for example: an absolute marvel of evolution, capable of processing images with a degree of precision and speed unmatched by any camera ever created in history. At the moment.
A group of scientists from Penn State University had the idea to imitate it, developing a device that creates images just like our eye would. The research was published in Science Advances and I link it here.
The recipe for vision
I made a quick shopping list of what we need to build our visual system. Quite a few “cone” cells sensitive to red, green and blue, and a bit of neural networking to start processing what we see before the information reaches the brain. Stop. End. (Follow me for more recipes).
This is the list of basic ingredients of the functioning of the human eye: because our eye, in case you missed it, starts working even before the brain starts working. And the device developed by Penn State researchers follows this recipe to the letter.
Artificial vision, natural “flavor”.
To create the device that will probably relegate every camera to prehistory, a group of sensors based on photodetectors in perovskite narrow band. The researchers created three different materials sensitive to red, green and blue respectively that emulate the "cones" of our eye.
These sensors are then combined with a neuromorphic algorithm (structured to "imitate" our neural networks) which processes the information and produces high, very high fidelity images.
Practically? A little artificial brain that can see just like us.
Goodbye, camera
Replacing a photographic "camera" with a "biotechnological" device that synthetically replicates the dynamics of Nature. You will surely have thought, at this point, that the perovskite material is at the center of the new ones solar panels. And in fact this device is also capable of generating energy by absorbing light: it could lead to the creation of photographic technologies that do not require batteries.
And I haven't said anything yet: the miniaturization of this tech could help us replace damaged or dead cells in our eyes, thus giving an important impetus to the development of biotechnology of the artificial retina.
Say it. Say it, you too can't wait for things like this to change our... Worldview!
