Caltech Mobile 3D Scan Chip

Employees of the Engineering and Applied Sciences Division at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech, Caltech) in the journal Optics Express published a scientific paper describing their new development. This is a special mobile chip, which they call a nanophoton coherent sensor (nanophotonic coherent imager, NCI). Due to the size of about 1 square millimeter and inexpensive production, the chip is able to translate 3D scanning to a completely different level of accuracy. The video shows a 3D model of a coin, obtained by the NCI from a distance of half a meter. Thus, to obtain an ultra-precise replica of the object, you need to use a 3D printer with a suitable resolution.

Technically, the chip is an array of 16 "lidars", each of which is able to analyze the phase and intensity of the reflected laser beam from the object. The distance to the object point determined from these measurements is used to form a 3D model together with the rest of the chip lidars. In a one-cent coin, which is used to demonstrate NCI technology, the depth resolution is 15 microns, and the lateral resolution is 50 microns. So far, the limited size of the device does not allow creating the same exact models for larger objects.


^{Photo: a fragment of the article Nanophotonic coherent imager}
As a practical use, the authors propose to use the NCI chip in mobile devices that can get a really new feature. Also, because of the tiny size, the chips can be installed on cars and used for autonomous control and collision avoidance systems.
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There is a very similar project in Google, known as Project Tango . It is designed specifically for use in mobile devices that can scan surrounding objects using a special 3D scanner. The project is in a more complete stage than the development of Caltech - Google promises to sell Tango devices this year.