DPReview: Sensor developer Rokton has announced that it has developed a circular image sensor. The company add the strapline "Circular sensors for your circular lens, why throw away half of the image?" It has made the idea a reality by developing a novel fabrication process that uses a clever approach laying down sensors in a honeycomb pattern on the wafer, allowing the production of circular image sensors with a diameter of 43mm – the same as the diagonal of 35mm full frame.
Rokton CEO Dr. Hwee Ng said "We’ve noticed that the ultimate imaging device, the human eye, is kind of round, lenses are round, and the most common photographic subject in the world - the human face - is often round too. The more we thought about it the more we realized a circular sensor made perfect sense."
Rokton's special ‘Dynartec’ (DYNAmic Real TimE Cropping) technology gives the user complete freedom to decide which area of the frame will be recorded while they’re shooting, or alternatively they can capture the complete circular raw and crop afterwards, using our unique circRAW format.
Anybody saw other April Fool's sensor jokes? Funny sensor stories are welcomed in comments.
If I remember well, Greg Kreider and Jan van der Spiegel did a circular sensor in the late '80s. Intention was a device that could be addressed by its polar coordinates, it had a high resolution in the center of the imager, and a lower one in the outer parts of the imager. The application was picture phone. The device realized was a CCD and it was NOT published on April 1st.
ReplyDeleteAlbert, would it be this one?
ReplyDeletePublication date (for the patent) was indeed November 15th.
Reticon also made some round sensors but they were only single annular rings. The biggest one had 720 elements (1/2 degree resolution.
ReplyDeleteTo David : YES, that was the sensor I was referring to.
ReplyDeleteAlthough not an image sensor, the industry standard W.O.M (write only memory) is an array-type device, not terribly unlike an image sensor.
ReplyDeleteThe ones in production not only save the data-out pin, but also multiplex Vdd and Vss onto a single pin.
It was a great ISSCC paper from Qimonda: just before they went tango-uniform
Write-only memory. 1972 Signetics.
ReplyDeleteOld joke.
And then there is the dark emitting diode (DED)
ReplyDeleteKodak announced Armoatography, a new process based on Neuro-Optic-Nasal-Sense (or NONSense) Imaging that captures smell with pictures. More info at http://homepage.1000words.kodak.com/default.asp?item=2996630
ReplyDeleteThis is hilarious! I'm copying it to the front page.
ReplyDeleteI believe FillFactory used to have a poster of a round image sensor (from which at least samples were made) hanging in their office.
ReplyDeleteround and round we go!
ReplyDeleteThis circular imager from Sensors last year (Nov 13) seems to have scored a hole in one: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=06688496
ReplyDeleteFoe even more on cicular imagers see:http://www.iee.et.tu-dresden.de/iee/analog/papers/mirror/visionchips/vision_chips/fuga18.html
ReplyDelete