X-ray vision chip for your phone

June 29, 2024

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Scientists in the USA have created an amazing new chip for smartphones that can ‘see’ through objects, almost like Superman’s X-ray vision!

This new chip uses special radio waves called millimeter waves (mmWave) to look through things. It has three tiny sensors that send out and receive these waves. When the waves bounce back from an object, the chip can show an outline of the object on a screen.

In tests, the chip could see through cardboard at a distance of about 0.39 inches (1 centimeter). Scientists shared their results on January 5 in a science journal.

It took 15 years to make this chip small enough to fit in a phone. Thanks to a huge improvement in the chip’s performance, it’s now possible. In the future, phones with this chip might help people see inside envelopes, find wires or pipes in walls, or even help doctors look inside the body.

One of the scientists, Wooyeol Choi from Seoul National University, said, “We designed the chip without lenses or optics so that it could fit into a mobile device. The pixels, which create images by detecting signals reflected from a target object, have the shape of a 0.5-mm square, about the size of a grain of sand.”

This new technology could also be used in places like airports, where they already have scanners to check bags, but this chip doesn’t use microwaves. It’s a step toward making our phones even smarter and more useful in everyday life!

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