sensors

Prepare to see another giant leap in smartphone picture-taking quality this year.

Sony announced today three new back-illuminated stacked CMOS image sensors optimized for bright and low-light conditions. The new compact sensors are faster, consume less power than previous versions, and will be available in 8- to 13- megapixel flavors. Most notably, the sensors feature new "RGBW Coding" and "High Dynamic Range (HDR) Movie" abilities baked directly onto the hardware. The iPhone 4S features a Sony 8-megapixel sensor, and it's possible that this may be a preview of the camera sensor inside the iPhone 5.

You might recognize the RGB acronym, as it stands for red-green-blue; the new sensor adds white pixels to the mix that pumps up the sensor's light sensitivity. It is possible that a future smartphone with this sensor will have little problem shooting pictures in dark rooms (or at night), as evidenced in the example picture above. Another benefit to the RGBW coding is that no changes to signal processing are required to support this updated technology, making it easy to implement. Surprisingly, Kodak has been shopping around something like this technology since at least 2007. … Read more

Regardless of the condition of your OS installation, if your system's hardware is not working properly then you will undoubtedly see undesired behavior that can stem from slowdowns and hangs to full system crashes and data corruption.

Because of the importance of having working hardware, Apple includes a hardware test routine on all of its new Mac systems, some of which are on the boot drive of your Mac, an others that are on the included OS X installation DVDs that came with older systems.

If you experience problems with your system crashing, hanging, or overheating with no change … Read more

Engineers at Japan's Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology have developed a system that can recognize individuals by measuring how they apply pressure on a seat when sitting down.

Nikkei reports that a team led by professor Shigeomi Koshimizu is working to commercialize the system as a "highly reliable" anti-theft system. The timeline? Two to three years, if an automaker signs on.

It's the car seat of the future. Or perhaps the airplane seat of the future--no need to show your ticket or appeal to a flight attendant to boot someone out of your coveted window seat. … Read more

Thanks in no small part to Moore's Law, engineers and entrepreneurs now have incredibly powerful tools at their hands, creating a fertile environment for invention.

In the year ahead, we're guaranteed more powerful supercomputers and smartphones from the tech industry's basic building block--the microchip. But in a world where the amount of information doubles every year, computers' ability to make sense of it has never been more vital, touching every field of scientific research from robotics to satellite imagery.

Meanwhile, advances in very different fields--materials science and biotech--are paving the way for better batteries, biofuels, and cleaner … Read more

Patches of tiny needles have already been shown to effectively deliver medications painlessly, and without a bloody mess. Now the tiny needles could also be used to monitor body chemistry in real time.

The new tech, developed by a team of biomedical engineers out of North Carolina State University, the University of California at San Diego, and Sandia National Laboratories, employs electrochemical sensors in the hollow channels of microneedles to detect certain molecules. The researchers reported their findings in the chemistry journal Talanta.

Current body chemistry monitoring involves taking samples, often before or after an event. Wearable micro-sensors, on the … Read more

Sharp's latest product isn't necessarily one you'd expect from the Osaka-based manufacturer.

Instead of a television set or a smartphone, Sharp's 12.1-megapixel camera sensor module is meant to be used in upcoming handsets. The company claims the module is the thinnest in the industry, at 5.47 millimeters (less than a quarter of an inch) high and less than half an inch deep.

The RJ63YC100 camera sensor will also be able to shoot full-HD (1080p) video and supports lens-shift technology for image stabilization.

Units are expected to sell for 12,000 yen, around $154. There's been no word on whether Sharp has managed to find a buyer, but it's likely we'll see them making their way into smartphones in the near future.

(Source: Crave Asia) … Read more

A mesh of one-atom-thick graphene foam could become man's best friend in sniffing out explosives.

The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute announced last week the creation of a graphene material that is 10 times more sensitive when detecting gases than current sensors used by bomb squads. It's also robust and can be made cheaply, according to its inventors.

Using the material to sense ammonia and nitrogen dioxide gases given off by explosive devices could lead to more sensitive and long-lasting tools for bomb detection. It can also be modified for industrial and medical uses in which sensors detect leaks of … Read more

Engineers at Mountain View, Calif.-based SST have come up with technology that uses acoustic sensors to help police pinpoint the exactly location of a gunshot as soon has it goes off.

SmartPlanet visited the San Francisco Police Department to see SST's gunfire-detection software in action.

This video first appeared at SmartPlanet under the headline "Acoustics technology alerts police of gun violence."

iPhone 4S users have been able to enjoy conversations with Siri. But owners of older iPhones have no Siri to talk to. Why?

Tearing down the iPhone 4S, the gurus at iFixit believe that Siri's absence on older phones is connected to changes in the proximity sensor used in the new iPhone.

The proximity sensor judges when your face is near the phone so it can dim the display and disable the keyboard. In past model iPhones, it turns on only during a call and then turn offs when the call is completed.

But Siri also makes use of … Read more