Technology Trends

In this article, the Register writes that “camera phones will soon have lenses made from nothing more substantial that a couple of drops of oil and water, but will still be capable of auto focusing, and even zooming in on subjects.” The lenses, developed by the French company Varioptic, contain drops of oil and water, acting respectively as conductor and insulator, and sandwiched between two windows. These liquid lenses could replace glass or plastic ones because of several advantages: no moving parts, leading to better reliability; a very small power consumption; very small dimensions (diameter: 8mm; thickness: 2mm); and a very fast response time of 2/100th of a second. You can expect the first camera phones using these liquid lenses as early as Christmas 2005. These lenses might also appear in medical equipment, such as endoscopes, optical networking equipment or surveillance devices. Read more…

The company was founded two years ago to exploit two core technology patents covering lenses based on the principles of electrowetting. This is the tendency of liquid to spread on a substrate, explains Etienne Paillard, the CEO of the company. “It means we can tune the shape of the drop to create a lens. Think about a tunable lens, like in the human eye,” he suggests.

The lens has a simple structure: two liquids, of equal density, sandwiched between two windows in a conical vessel. One liquid is water, which is conductive. The other, oil, acts as a lid, allowing the engineers to work with a fixed volume of water, and provides a measure of stability for the optical axis. The interface between the oil and water will change shape depending on the voltage applied across the conical structure. At zero volts, the surface is flat, but at 40 volts, the surface of the oil is highly convex, Paillard said.

What are the advantages of these liquid lenses?

There are several obvious advantages to having a lens built like this. Because there are no moving parts, there is less to break and it should be more rugged. Power consumption is also very low: around a tenth of that of a motorised auto focus lens.

It also has the potential to be made very small. Paillard says that at the moment, the limit is a couple of millimetres, but that the company is researching ways of shrinking the lens further. Varioptics is now developing the lens for use in endoscopy as well as in camera phones. But the camera phone market is its priority right now.

And when will we see the first camera phones equipped with these lenses?

The company has a non-exclusive licensing deal with a subsidiary of Samsung to develop the lenses for use in its camera phones. Paillard expects products will be on the shelves by Q1 2006 at the latest, and maybe even in time for Christmas next year.

The first product will be the auto focussing lens, but in another year’s time Varioptics will have a true zoom capability, using two of the liquid lenses, Paillard says. “We’ve just proven in simulation that a 3x zoom is possible. We’re building the prototype now.”

Varioptic has filed two patents to protect its technologies. Here are the direct links to a lens with variable focus and a method for centering a drop of liquid on a given point on a surface.

If for a reason or another, these links appeared to be broken, please go to the Intellectual Property Digital Library which provides access to intellectual property data collections hosted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Then choose the patents database and enter the numbers of the patents in the search box. These numbers are respectively 99/18456 and 00/58763.

It’s worth noting that the Register published in March 2004 a story named “The $5 ‘no moving parts’ fluid zoom lens — twice” in which it compared the Varioptic patents with another one filed by Philips. As the Philips patent clearly made references to the Varioptic ones, it is highly possible that Philips needs to license the Varioptic technology if it wants to use it.

Sources: Lucy Sherriff, The Register, December 1, 2004; John Lettice, The Register, March 5, 2004; and various websites

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I’m sure that many of you are sick and tired to carry their laptops during your trips. Of course, you can use a USB key ring to carry your data to access it from any other PC. But what about having a handheld device, such as an iPod, containing the full image of your computing environment, and restoring this whole environment on another PC anywhere in the world? Thanks to researchers from IBM, it is now possible to use the SoulPad system, a portable device carrying a stack of software. The host PC, which can be of any variety, “boots an auto-configuring operating system (Knoppix) from the SoulPad, starts a virtual machine monitor, and resumes a suspended virtual machine that has the user’s entire personal computing environment.” Now, the IBM team is thinking to use cell phones as well to carry the SoulPad system as soon as they have enough disk storage capacity. This day, it will feel easier to travel…

Before going further, here is a diagram showing the multi-tiered architecture of the SoulPad (Credit: IBM Research).

Here are more details from IBM Research.

Essentially, SoulPad enables a user to hibernate a PC session to a pocket form-factor device and carry the device to some another PC and resume his session on that PC. SoulPad has minimal dependencies on PCs that can be used to resume a user session.

In specific, PCs are neither required to be network connected, nor have any pre-installed software. The only requirement is the support of a high speed local connection to a SoulPad device for an acceptable suspend/resume times and acceptable runtime performance.

The researchers note that their approach is very different from the Intel’s Internet Suspend/Resume (ISR) project because SoulPad doesn’t require a known stack of software on the second PC.

As you might guess, the second PC doesn’t boot instantaneously. But suspending and restoring times are very similar to the time it takes for your laptop to move to hibernating mode, about 2 minutes using a USB 2.0 connection.

And what about security if your SoulPad is stolen?

To protect user data if a SoulPad is misplaced or stolen, we encrypt the disk partition that holds the VM images using the AES128 block cipher. We used the publicly available loop-aes package for Linux in our implementation.

The encryption key is generated by hashing a usersupplied passphrase. After the Host OS boots, it prompts the user to enter the passphrase. If the user supplies an incorrect passphrase, the resulting hash will not correspond to the AES key and the mount operation will fail since the decrypted data will not correspond to a valid filesystem. In order to defeat brute force attacks that attempt to guess the passphrase, the loop-aes package requires the passphrase to be at least 20 characters long. For convenience, we permit users to supply this passphrase via an auxiliary USB flash key.

But will a friend allow you to use his PC? You can tell him that the SoulPad system doesn’t touch anything on his machine and will not leave any traces either.

The SoulPad project was presented at MobiSys 2005, the Usenix Third Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services, which was held on June 6-8, 2005, in Seattle, WA.

The researchers received an award for Best Paper for “Reincarnating PCs with Portable SoulPads.” Here are two links to the abstract and to the full paper (PDF format, 14 pages, 187 KB).

The IBM Research site also provides a link to a video showing how the SoulPad concept works (5 minutes and 53 seconds, 14 MB).

Finally, you might want to read two other articles about the SoulPad project, “System carries PC soul” from Technology Research News and “Pocket-sized computer ’soul’ developed” from New Scientist.

Sources: IBM Research Project page about SoulPad, 2005; and various web sites

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It’s not the first time I’m telling you about pocket projectors (check here for example). But now, a small UK company, Light Blue Optics, has developed an holographic projector so small that it could be integrated into your laptop or even your cell phone. In “Holographic projector for your future PDA,” PDA Live.com writes that the holographic laser technology used by the company relies on very few components, meaning these future projectors should be cheap to produce. The company says these projectors should be on the market in the next two to four years. Read more…

Here are the key excerpts from the article.

The company’s new technology requires only a very few components, which means the projector can be made relatively cheap and very small, so that it could be integrated any portable device. The company also created as special chip that is capable of generating and displaying high quality holograms at video frame rates.

How does it work? A hologram pattern, which to the naked eye looks like a collection of random dots, is displayed on a small liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCOS) microdisplay - a tiny, very fast liquid crystal display built on top of a chip. The hologram patterns are calculated by Light Blue Optics’ proprietary “hologram chip” so that when the microdisplay is illuminated by laser light, the light interferes with itself in a complex manner through the physical process of diffraction which, when carefully controlled, results in the formation of a large, high quality projected image on, for example, a screen or a wall.

The company showed a working prototype at St John’s Innovation Press Day in Cambridge, UK, in November 2004. It also issued this press release.

And when will products be in the shops? The company answers.

At present, Light Blue Optics has a lab-based demonstrator, which converts a standard composite video signal into high-quality 2D holographic video, in real time. The hologram generation engine runs in a commercially available FPGA (field-programmable gate array) chip, whose design extends naturally to cheap mass production. Other processing platforms including low-power digital signal processing (DSP) ICs are also under development.

Light Blue Optics is working with several strategic partners to further develop this technology into real products. It is envisaged that devices based on this technology will be in the shops in the next two to four years.

I can’t wait for Christmas 2006.

Source: PDA Live.com, December 27, 2004; and various websites

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A flexible image scanner that you could roll up and carry in your pocket along with your cell phone will soon help you to capture an accurate image of a curved surface such as the label on the wine bottle you just shared with friends. In “Flexible scanner works on curved surfaces,” New Scientist writes that a recently introduced prototype weighs less than 1 gram. Its dimensions are 50 by 50 millimeters and it’s only 0.4 millimeter thick. You connect it to your phone, which acts both as a power provider and as a display. So far, this flexible scanner can only capture images of its own size and has only a resolution of 36 dots per inch. But more advanced scanners should be on the market within three years, with better resolutions and in various sizes. The Japanese inventors say that a 7-centimeter-square scanner should cost about $10. Read more…

Here is the description of this flexible scanner by New Scientist.

The new device, developed in Japan by electrical engineer Takao Someya and colleagues at the University of Tokyo, comprises a polymer matrix in which thousands of light-sensitive plastic photodiodes have been deposited 700 micrometres apart beneath a grid of plastic transistors.

Each photodiode produces a current in response to light input, which its accompanying transistor stores as a charge. This can then be read into the memory of a mobile phone and converted into an image.

To use the sheet image scanner, it has to be placed on the area of interest, such as a bottle or an open book. It can only capture the image it covers; it cannot be swiped across it like an office hand scanner.

The above images were also shown in “Flexible image scanner,” published by ElectronicsWeekly.com, which adds a few details about the resolution of the device.

Each pixel in the device consists of an organic transistor and organic photodetector with an effective sensing area of 50×50µm and the 0.4mm thick imager has a 50×50mm sensing area and resolution of 36 dots per inch (dpi) “with the potential to go up to 250 dpi”, said Someya.

In this other article, “Image scanner fits in a pocket,” optics.org brings additional information.

The device consists of a polymer laminate sheet containing a two-dimensional array of light sensor cells, each featuring an organic transistor and an organic photodiode.

Unlike conventional image scanners which mechanically scan a linear array of photodetectors over an object, the new Japanese design does not require any moving parts or internal optics to capture an image. Instead, the sheet is simply placed over the target object in ambient light conditions and the transistors are probed to reveal to the light intensity of each photodetector. Each sensor cell is also covered with an opaque light shield to prevent incident light from above distorting the signal generated by the object below.

Someya’s current prototype has an effective sensing area of 2×2 inches and is just 0.4 mm thick and 1 g in weight. It features an array of 72×72 (5184) sensor cells, each 700 µm in size, giving a scan resolution of 36 dpi.

This flexible scanner was recently introduced during a presentation at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM 2004), which was held in December in San Francisco. Here is a link to the press kit for this organic sheet-image scanner.

For more information, you can visit the Takao Someya Group website, which contains an abstract of the IEDM presentation.

A large-area, flexible, and lightweight sheet image scanner has been successfully manufactured on a plastic film, for the first time, integrating high-quality organic transistors and organic photodetectors. Since this area-type image-capturing device does not require any optics or any mechanical scanning devices, it is innovatively light to carry, shock-resistant and potentially inexpensive to manufacture.

Finally, I already mentioned here a previous work from the Takao Someya Group, “Flexible Sensors Make Robot Skin.”

Sources: Celeste Biever, New Scientist, December 23, 2004; Steve Bush, ElectronicsWeekly.com, December 14, 2004; Oliver Graydon, optics.org, December 22, 2004; and various websites

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Engineers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have designed a phone which contains a compact radiation detector, making easy for police forces to check for radioactive material hidden in large cities. In “Cellphone sniffs out dirty bombs,” New Scientist writes that the phone measures continuously the level of radiation around it and transmits it to a central computer via an always-on Internet connection. The phone will also send time and location information gathered from its GPS unit. When these phones are deployed around the U.S., they will form a radiation monitoring network dubbed the RadNet. Such phones should be available for about $1,000 in a few months first to military personnel or police officers, then to U.S. Postal service personnel or delivery service workers. It should take more time before you can buy one yourself at a Wal-Mart store. Read more…

Here are the opening paragraphs from the New Scientist article.

A smart phone that can detect radiation may soon be helping the police to find the raw materials for radioactive “dirty bombs” before they are deployed. The phones will glean data as the officers carrying them go about their daily business, and the information will be used to draw up maps of radiation that will expose illicit stores of nuclear material.

The detector is the brainchild of engineers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, US, who developed it in response to the rise in illicit trafficking of radioactive materials (see graphic). Customs officers at ports and airports already wear pagers that detect radiation. But any radioactive material not picked up by border controls can be hidden in towns and cities, with little chance that it will be found.

And here is the solution proposed by the LLNL engineers.

Now LLNL engineers funded by the US Department of Homeland Security have devised a way to tackle the problem. They have turned a multi-function internet cellphone into a wireless sensor that will feed data into a new type of radiation monitoring network that they are calling a RadNet.

The phone transmits radiation readings continuously over an always-on internet connection to a central computer. A GPS receiver in the phone labels the data with a time and location, allowing it to be used to build up a radiation map of a particular area.

How much will cost such a device?

The challenge for the LLNL engineers was to devise a radiation sensor cheap enough to make the project viable. “It’s relatively straightforward to make a $10,000 radiation detection device that works well,” says project leader Bill Craig at LLNL’s Radiation Detection Center (RDC). “But the target price of these units is $1000. That’s the phone, the whole thing.”

This paper from the RDC, “Compact Radiation Detector and Global-Positioning-System Unit in a Cell Phone,” gives additional details about these phones (the above illustration comes from this paper).

New-generation gamma-ray sensors and a global-positioning-system (GPS) module are built into a cell phone. The device uses pixelated cadmium zinc telluride (CdZnTe, often abbreviated CZT) detectors coupled with an ultra-low-power readout with moderate energy resolution. The device requires no cooling and is battery-powered (24 to 48 hours on a single charge).

Because the poorer-quality sections of the CZT crystal are left unconnected, we can use less-expensive, commercial-grade detector materials. The material is literally “sliced and diced” from the ingot, with no material selection or individual detector testing required. This approach dramatically lowers the cost of each detector, which costs less than $350 now and will be less than $100 when the device is mass-produced.

Let’s return to New Scientist for more details about the detectors.

Craig’s team cut costs by compromising on the quality of the cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) semiconductor crystals that lie at the heart of the detectors. When a gamma-ray photon strikes the CZT it knocks a number of electrons out of position, producing a cascade of electron-hole pairs. A voltage applied across the crystal turns these into a current whose strength depends on the energy of the incident photons. This in turn allows the radionuclide that generated the gamma rays — caesium-137 or cobalt-60, for example — to be identified.

The reason why these detectors are relatively inexpensive is thta the team used cheap crystals.

They divide the crystal into 64 separate sensing “pixels” in which each pixel acts as a detector on its own. They then simply discard the output from the 10% to 15% of pixels that do not work because of defects. The team has found that by using four of these crystals in each phone, they can achieve reasonable sensitivity.

Let’s move back to the RDC paper to check for future uses of these phones.

The device reports its health when reporting its data; system maintenance consists of swapping out a malfunctioning unit in much the same way pager or cell phone companies do. The only maintenance requirement is charging the battery periodically. Each device can be used as a programmable radiation alarm, personal dosimeter, search instrument, and analysis tool.

A central processing system monitors the data from the network of devices and provides additional sensitivity by tracking below-threshold alerts, correlating measurements from different detectors passing the same location at different times, and iteratively adjusting system thresholds to account for transient events.

Such devices are ideally suited for military personnel, Transportation Security Administration screeners, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, U.S. Postal Service personnel, public safety personnel, delivery service workers, and even nuclear search teams.

For more information about nuclear security, you can visit the web sites of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and its Office of Nonproliferation Research and Engineering.

Sources: Jenny Hogan, New Scientist, December 9, 2004; and various web sites

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You might consider this idea with enthusiasm or skepticism, but mobile TV might soon represent a much larger market for the cell phone industry than today’s ringtones or text messages. In “TV Phones Prep for Prime Time,” BusinessWeek says that according to In-Stat, revenues could grow from $32 million in 2004 to $1.9 billion in 2008. (I’m always amazed by analysts’ forecasts.) For example, a small Californian company, Sling Media, will launch its first product to deliver streaming video content to your handheld devices in just a few months. And wireless operators, phone makers and cable companies are all working on similar programs. Of course, they only plan to sell you short programs, such as news or music clips. Besides the facts that the screen of your phone is small and that you’ll need faster networks than today’s ones, would you subscribe to such a service? Read more…

As often, the BusinessWeek story starts with an anecdote before moving to the big picture.

Two years ago, Blake Krikorian had to travel on business just as his favorite baseball team, the San Francisco Giants, unexpectedly earned a place in the World Series for the first time in 13 years. Krikorian desperately wanted to watch the games but had few options. At the time, he wished he could watch it on his cell phone. But no such service was available.

Sensing a business opportunity, Krikorian began to investigate the concept, and in June of this year he launched Sling Media. The San Mateo (Calif.)-based company’s first product, due out in the first quarter of 2005, will stream video content to handheld devices.

The company found $10 million to start its business and enrolled companies such as Microsoft or Texas Instruments as partners. Does this mean there is a real market here?

Mobile TV is a promising frontier in the handheld industry. The ranks of subscribers could jump from 273,000 by yearend to 1.2 million in 2005, and revenues could grow from $32.8 million in 2004 to $47.5 million in 2005 — and $1.9 billion in 2008, figures Clint Wheelock, an analyst with tech consultancy In-Stat.

Eventually, mobile TV might far outshine the markets for popular wireless data services such as ringtones and short text messaging. An In-Stat survey of 1,009 people done in February showed that Americans are far more excited about mobile TV than about any other data application offered so far.

As I almost only watch TV to catch old movies, I’m not terribly excited by the idea of watching them on my cell phone. But this is not the future of mobile TV.

User surveys conducted by Digital Video Recorder (DVR) company TiVo indicate that Americans spend only two to five hours a week watching feature-length movies. The bulk of their 20-plus TV viewing hours each week goes to watching shorter programs, such as news footage or music videos.

Such clips might be perfect for viewing on a cell phone — say, while you’re stuck on a train on the way to work. Many industry watchers believe the handset will turn into the third TV screen in our lives, behind the home TV and the PC. “This is really a service with mass appeal,” Wheelock says.

BusinessWeek then looks at mobile TV future plans currently under development at wireless providers, phone makers and cable companies. And it writes that all these future providers of mobile TV contents are facing the same problem. Current networks are not fast enough.

For now, though, perfect-picture quality requires a wireless connection with speed of at least 100 kilobits per second. So, streaming devices may be confined to areas equipped with wireless high-speed Internet access technology called Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity), such as Starbucks outlets.

Of course, wireless networks have a long way to go in terms of quality and speed before such services will be able to take on the TV. Cell phones’ memory would have to grow dramatically, and their battery life would need to make a major leap. Still, mobile TV could be the new horizon in wireless handhelds.

Will I ever watch TV news in the Paris subway? I have some doubts. And you, what do you think of the idea of watching TV on your cell phone? Please post your comments below.

Source: Olga Kharif, BusinessWeek Online, Decmber 1, 2004

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