Uh oh, that fly has a wafer-scale camera

..John Wallace ..Senior Editor ..Laser Focus World ..johnw@pennwell.com

Predictions for the future of humanity range from an expansion of the human race throughout the universe to a quick self-extinction based on nuclear war or biological agents. On a just slightly less-grand scale, some prognosticators say that within a few decades we will have melded with machines, our thoughts and memories flowing throughout electronic or quantum-optical circuits. (Others would say to this, "Bah.")

But what is next, really? I'll just make one prediction: the rise of lethal nano unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Here, "nano" means the size of insects. Hummingbird-sized UAVs have been around for a few years, as have those the size of dragonflies.^1,2 Real insects are also being turned into flying "cyborgs" for various purposes.^3,4 There is now even a technical journal devoted to the topic: the International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles.⁵

Larger UAVs, of course, some quite lethal, are already in operation. But the smaller ones have been described mainly as sensing devices, often for surveillance. The ideal, which I believe will be achieved within a few years, is to shrink them from the size of a dragonfly to something much smaller -- say, that of a housefly or mosquito.

For example
But a mosquito does more than sense its surroundings; it also can deliver an itch-causing toxin to a human or animal. Perhaps all a nano UAV would need is a needle and some toxin to take out a target. Or a fly-sized surveillance nano UAV could work in concert with a larger, more lethal nano UAV. All this would hinge upon getting enough power to the UAV (such as in Ref. 4), and creating optical sensors small and light enough to be carried along. Wafer-scale cameras fit the bill nicely.


Through-silicon-via technology enables
low-cost CMOS cameras smaller than a
match head. (Image: Awaiba GmbH)

I'm just making a guess (meaning I have no insider info!). Is my prediction an obvious one ("Anyone coulda guessed that")? A lunatic one (“Here’s a tinfoil hat for you, young fella”)? I don’t know, but I’d love to hear from Laser Focus World readers about their own ideas for what strange photonics-enabled devices might be appearing in our future.

REFERENCES:

1. http://www.militaryaerospace.com/index/display/article-display/298457/articles/military-aerospace-electronics/volume-18/issue-7/electro-optics-supplement/features/engineered-by-nature-uav-designs-modeled-after-biological-sources.html

2. http://www.delfly.nl/?site=diii&menu=home&lang=en

3. http://www.ns.umich.edu/new/releases/20087-insect-cyborgs-may-become-first-responders-search-and-monitor-hazardous-environs

4. http://www.pratt.duke.edu/node/3181

5. http://www.multi-science.co.uk/ijmav.htm

Lasers can make brown eyes blue--but should they?

Gail Overton Senior Editor Laser Focus World gailo@pennwell.com

The daily news posting at http://www.laserfocusworld.com/ entitled "Laser turns brown eyes blue" generated much discussion on LinkedIn. The comments weren't centered around how 'cool' or 'neat' the concept was, but instead focused on the technology details and the philosophical aspects of the procedure. After all, the LinkedIn audience to whom we share our Laser Focus World postings is not your average non-technical crowd; these are photonics industry professionals who are clearly concerned about how something works and what impact it has on society as a whole.



Turning brown eyes to blue may seem magical to a non-laser audience, but it is merely an extension of laser aesthetics--a topic profiled in our Photonics Applied feature series for November called "Looking good with lasers." Laser hair removal works on the principle of targeting melanin in the hair shaft and through laser heat, destroying the melanin and the hair follicle. Laser aesthetics also includes wrinkle removal, liposuction, and tattoo and lesion removal--different wavelengths of light attack different colored pigments in the tattoo or lesion, and it really works!



But even though lasers can turn brown eyes blue by targeting melanin, should they? One LinkedIn respondent said that they wished scientific research could be channeled into curing unsolved medical problems that we suffer rather than in trying to alter one's appearance for cosmetic reasons. I wholeheartedly agree; however, my sentiments will not change the fact that as long as people have "disposable incomes", money will be spent on luxuries. I was amazed to learn while researching the laser aesthetics article that teeth whitening is a $5.5 billion dollar global market, while the entire laser market is around $7 billion. Maybe we're all in the wrong business!

Still other LinkedIn comments focused on the technology. "Mankind has always sought to change his/her appearance--hair color, skin, and eyes," said Gennady Medvedkin. "Tomorrow we may witness artificial eyes made from silicon."

Medvedkin says that image sensors are really artificial eyes with great spatial resolution and color-sensing capabilities that can even exceed the capabilities of human vision. Thin silicon plates the size of the pupil could be implanted within the human body, completely replacing the eye, and recent computer algorithms allow extensions of the dynamic range in sensors up to 140 dB that are comparable to the human eye. Medvedkin says that the eye must adapt to very low light intensities for minutes and sometimes hours, whereas CMOS image sensors operate in the millisecond to second time range at low voltage with great success.

Personally, I'll keep my green eyes green and will be glad when this story fades from my memory; I'm getting tired of humming the "Don't it make my brown eyes blue" song from Crystal Gayle!

Metamaterials and media hype

..John Wallace ..Senior Editor ..Laser Focus World ..johnw@pennwell.com

Optical metamaterials are truly revolutionary: their properties (for example, a printable negative-index material) are like no other, and their nanoscale structure can be varied as a function of position to create unusual devices -- such as "cloaks." The idea is that the electromagnetic properties within the cloak create a coordinate-transformed space that can divide and channel light around an object and recombine it to form a seemingly undisturbed wavefront. Great idea, and extremely difficult to achieve, especially for objects larger than a few wavelengths in size.

It's also extremely difficult to write about, especially by the general press -- which incessantly mangles the topic by prattling on about Harry Potter invisibility cloaks, making readers or viewers think that Harry Potter-style magic is just around the corner.

Just one of many examples:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/harry-potter-invisibility-cloak-effect-created-real-texas/story?id=14674417

By the way, in the above example, the "invisibility cloak" is not a metamaterial cloaking device at all. It's simply a switchable photothermal mirror. (Note to the general press: my bathroom mirror is not an invisibility cloak, either.)

So where does the uninformed reader, who is even less informed after reading pop-sci Potter-material articles, expect the first consumer-grade invisibility cloak to appear?

Hammacher-Schlemmer -- where it is simply called "The Invisibility Cloak."

The Apple Store -- where it comes in the form of an iPhone skin.

A toolbar for your browser -- without the feature, the toolbar is gray; with it, the toolbar is gray.

Military surplus -- yeah, we all know the feds developed this years ago and are walking among us even as we speak.

Laser Focus World -- actually, no, you won't find it here. Sorry.

Look who’s 50 in 2011: Nonlinear optics and Spectra-Physics

Gail Overton Senior Editor Laser Focus World gailo@pennwell.com

Ah, who can forget the 2010 50th anniversary celebration of the laser? Our normally docile and academic-minded photonics industry was jumping in 2010, with jubilant celebrations of Lasers in the City of Lights, a special Laser Focus World Photonic Frontiers issue celebrating 50 Years of Lasers, and even an awesome "LasersRock!" festival at CLEO 2010.

Everyone loves a celebration, and I must say I was sad to see the laser anniversary end. Fortunately, many photonics inventions and companies sprang from the invention of the laser, and 2011 continues the celebration with a number of memorable 50-year anniversaries:

50 years of nonlinear optics

At the 2011 Stanford Photonics Research Center (SPRC) Annual Symposium, attendees were treated to several special sessions highlighting 50 years of nonlinear optics. Nonlinear optics veterans Chris Ebbers and Bob Byer gave a historical perspective on the National Ignition Facility and Stanford's demonstration of the first tunable CW parametric laser via optical parametric oscillation (OPO), respectively.

50 years of Spectra-Physics

While it is not extraordinary for a technology to see a 50th anniversary, it is a much rarer event for a photonics company to see such a milestone. But just this year, Spectra-Physics, now a Newport Corporation Brand, turned 50! And on the evening of September 8th, 2011, about 180 people gathered in Mountain View, CA to celebrate the golden anniversary of the first commercial laser company. Spectra-Physics was founded by five former Varian employees and incorporated on September 8, 1961--exactly 50 years earlier.

IMAGE: The Spectra-Physics 50th Anniversary celebration drew attendees from across the laser industry and beyond. (Courtesy Newport Spectra-Physics)

All three surviving founders, Arnold Bloom, Herbert Dwight and Kenneth Ruddock were in attendance at the event.

IMAGE: Herb Dwight (left) and Ken Ruddock (right), two of the founders of Spectra-Physics, celebrate its 50th anniversary. (Courtesy Newport Spectra-Physics)



The large crowd, consisting, mostly of former employees, included 6 of the first 13, as well as many former executives and division managers of the firm. The founders and guests shared vintage photos, stories from the birth of the laser industry, and had a great evening all around. The celebration was held not far from the block in Mountain View where Spectra-Physics laser operations were centered, producing a stream of laser industry “firsts” for about 48 years.

IMAGE: Attendees sign a 50-year timeline documenting their arrival at Spectra-Physics. (Courtesy Newport Spectra-Physics)



And in 2012: 50 years of diode lasers

But wait, the celebration continues into 2012, which is the official 50th anniversary of the diode laser--those little solid-state beacons of light that have found their way into our lives in countless ways.

At the 2012 Lasers & Photonics Marketplace Seminar, held during Photonics West 2012 on Monday, January 23rd (and in my shameless plug, the ONLY event anywhere in the world that focuses on the entire laser marketplace), David Welch, executive VP and chief strategy officer of Infinera, will present "Celebrating 50 Years of Laser Diodes." Believe it or not, lasing in semiconductor diodes was first observed in 1962--two short years after the first demonstration of the laser. Join Welch at the seminar as he talks about the evolution of the diode laser business, and help Laser Focus World celebrate the numerous opportunities that the diode laser has brought to all of us in the photonics community.

Ball camera takes spherical panoramas

John Wallace Senior Editor Laser Focus World johnw@pennwell.com

The commoditization of high-tech builds on itself. For example, CMOS imagers are used in digital cameras, become cheaper to manufacture, and are used in cell phones and toys. In the process they become even lower in cost, smaller, sturdier, and easier to use.

In one example that will likely continue this trend, Jonas Pfeil, who recently graduated from the Technical University of Berlin, took 36 of these imagers and created a portable, rugged camera that takes a spherical panoramic shot of its surroundings. To use it, you just toss the ball-shaped imager into the air: its internal accelerometer (another commoditized device) and some integration software predict the ball’s highest point and snap simultaneous pictures from all its CMOS imagers. The info is then downloaded via USB and viewed in custom-written spherical-panoramic viewer software.


(Image: Jonas Pfeil, http://jonaspfeil.de/ballcamera)

The project was Pfeil's diploma thesis. He and his colleagues at TU Berlin will be presenting the camera as the Emerging Technologies demonstration 'Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera' at SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 (Hong Kong; Dec. 12 to 15).

The 2-megapixel cell-phone-camera modules are held in a structure fabricated by a 3D printer, which also holds a layer of foam padding. When thrown, the device can capture scenes with many moving objects without ghosting. The inventors are currently looking for an investor or a partner to build the camera.

I can see many potential uses for this ball camera. A tourist gets a panorama of the Grand Canyon. A tweener gets a shot of all her partying BFFs at once, even the ones sneaking vodka. An undersea scientist gets accurate counts of fish and other sea life. A CIA agent gets that essential bit of info from outside a second-story window. And (with video rather than still images), an IMAX theaterful of viewers gets motion sickness.


To see the full-sized panorama, go to: http://jonaspfeil.de/files/ballcamera/ball-camera-panorama.jpg. (Image: Jonas Pfeil, http://jonaspfeil.de/ballcamera)

Smartphones become photonics hardware

John Wallace Senior Editor Laser Focus World johnw@pennwell.com

As Laser Focus World readers know, the use of the iPhone in photonics is growing. Examples include the iPhone as a source of info (geometrical optics guide; colorimetry color and measurement values) and the iPhone as a hardware/software photonics system (holographic microscope; 3D image capture). Earlier this month I posted a news story to the Laser Focus World home page on another example of the iPhone as photonics system: a microscope using a ball lens and the iPhone's camera to image blood cells.

I personally have an Android phone instead of an iPhone. Since Android is actually more popular than iOS for phones, I've been waiting for more Android photonics apps and such to appear (there are some already, such as a fluorochrome search app from Chroma Technology).

Yesterday, John Canning of the University of Sydney let me know that the use of Android devices as photonics hardware is advancing, as illustrated by an experiment in which he and his colleagues use an Android smartphone (the HTC Desire) as the light source for a fluorescence-microscope setup.¹ The blue light is from the phone's OLED screen, and a freely downloadable color-flashlight app from the Android market is the spectral control.


Specimen under Android phone illumination:
(a) white light (RGB); (b) blue; and (c) excited
by blue and filtered to pass only fluorescence.
(Images: University of Sydney)

The specimen is placed on a slide directly atop the OLED screen; the blue emission, which peaks at 445 nm, excites the fluorone dye Rhodamine 123 inside a silica mesostructure sphere. A green filter passes only the resulting fluorescence to the microscope optics. The researchers believe that a custom app would raise the signal intensity and allow rapid modulation for fluorescence-decay measurements. In addition, modifying the setup to use the phone's own camera will further simplify the device raising its potential for use in remote areas.

The authors point out that a big advantage of Android is its open access, which allows total software control, making it straightforward to integrate the phone with other hardware.

REFERENCE:

1. John Canning et al., Sensors, 11, p. 7055, 6 July 2011; doi:10.3390/s110707055.

FiO 2011 not-to-be-missed highlights

Gail Overton   Senior Editor   Laser Focus World   gailo@pennwell.com

If you're able to attend the 2011 Frontiers in Optics conference (FiO 2011; www.frontiersinoptics.com)--the OSA's 95th Annual Meeting that also includes the Laser Science XXVII conference--there are several special events and significant research papers that should not be missed. To be held next week from October 16-20 in San Jose, CA, the annual conference focuses on the timeliest research and development topics in optical science and engineering, with eight conference tracks, FiO 1 through FiO 8, on Optical Design and Instrumentation, Optical Sciences, Optics in Biology and Medicine, Optics in Information Science, Fiber Optics and Optical Communications, Integrated Photonics, Quantum Electronics, and Vision and Color, respectively.

To find out what's hot in each of the eight conference tracks, the Sunday night (4-6 pm in the Fairmont Regency Ballroom) "What's Hot in Optics Today" special event is a good place to start. Here, the Division chairs of OSA's technical groups will present overviews of recent developments in various subfields of optics in an informative and accessible manner. And hopefully you'll attend the Sunday evening welcome reception that immediately follows from 6-7:30 pm in the Sainte Claire Hotel Ballroom.

Beginning Monday, October 17 at 4:45 pm in paper FMI3, Cornell researchers present "Demonstration of Temporal Cloaking," showing for the first time how an event in the time domain can be cloaked using time-space duality concepts and novel split time-lenses.

On Wednesday, October 19 at 11:45 am, don't miss paper FLW4 entitled "Controlled Synthesis of Gold Nanorods and Application to Brain Tumor Delineation" in which a Duke University research team explains how they are using gold nanorods for tumor delineation due to their unique optical properties and biocompatibility; the nanorods effectively label tumors within brain slices.

And just after that during Wednesday's poster session from 12-1:30 pm, a team from UC Davis presents poster JWA8, "Microscopy and Spectroscopy on a Cell Phone." Laser Focus World has been covering cell-phone-based photonics for a while now, but the applications (no pun intended; is there an app for that?) continue to grow.



IMAGE: From left to right, blood-cell images showing normal, iron deficiency anemia, and sickle cell anemia types of blood are compared when using a traditional microscope (upper) and the iPhone microscope (lower). The iPhone details are clearly adequate enough to distinguish between the three blood samples. (Courtesy UC Davis)
And although this video is a few years old, Aydogan Ozcan from UCLA explains in simple terms the benefit of cell-phone microscopy:



There is also another good video from UC Berkeley on their CellScope at http://youtu.be/5qcJySNLs84.

Moving right along (it's easy to get caught up in this "smart" phone world) … don't miss the Wednesday afternoon presentation at 4 pm (paper FWW1) entitled "Bio-Inspired Photonic Nanostructures and Lasers" to see how Yale University physicists are creating biomimetic-based photonic nanostructures that confine light, leading to efficient lasing that is tuned via structural parameters.

In addition to the Monday morning (8-noon) Plenary session in the Fairmont Regency Ballroom, the exhibit hall will be open on Tuesday, October 18 from 10-4 pm, and Wednesday, October 19 from 10-2 pm. So far, a total of 80 exhibitors will be available to actually show how ground-breaking research is being translated into helpful research tools and useful, everyday products.

Laser Focus World chief editor Conard Holton and I will be attending the show off and on from Sunday through Thursday; please email me at gailo@pennwell.com if you have some interesting FiO-related research or product development news to share with us either before, during, or after the conference. See you there!