MIT Researchers Develop Camera-Like Fabric

Remember when cell phones started coming with cameras and there was a big fuss because people were able to easily get cameras into places they shouldn’t be?  Well not only is there a rumor going around that iPods may be getting cameras too, but a group of researchers have developed a fabric that can act as a rudimentary camera.

On his CNET blog, Underexposed, Stephan Shankland writes, “Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a fabric made of a mesh of light-sensitive fibers that collectively act like a rudimentary camera. The fibers, which each can detect two frequencies of light, produced signals that when amplified and processed by a computer reproduced an image of a smiley face near the mesh.”

In the blog post, Stephan also states, “MIT suggested that the technology, if developed further, could give a soldier a uniform that would help him see threats in all directions. Optical fiber webs, by distributing the chore across a large area, would be less susceptible to damage in one area.”