International conferences are the perfect occasion to discover new – and sometimes surprising – research tracks. One of the fascinating lectures I’ve been confronted to is this revolutionary project of Columbia university : to develop self-powered cameras.

The principle is really easy to understand : since cameras measure light, and light can be used to generate energy, they seek to develop image sensors that can not only capture images but also generate the power needed to do so. To achieve this goal, the whole design of a camera is discussed. The electric scheme of a “traditional” sensing pixel is modified to obtain self-powered pixels : it produces a voltage proportional to the incident light. The sensor is built from a 30×40 pixels frame and compacted into a battery-free camera, which indefinitely records scenes in a well-lit scene !

 

Of course, the object itself is still at its deployment stage and the sequences it produces are not of the highest quality, but still ! A camera is capable of producing the energy it requires to function… Can you envision all the possible applications – video surveillance, internet of things, wearable sensors, etc. – of such a technology ?

See more on their research project webpage here.