Work on artificial retinas is progressing apace in Japan, and after Fuji Photo Film Co’s reported breakthrough in the field using organic materials (CI No 1,842), Mitsubishi Electric Corp says it has developed an artificial retina chip that can process images about 100 times faster than the conventional image processing systems: the company says that the chip duplicates some image processing functions of a human eye by lighting on only the essential features of an image to be converted into electrical signals, reducing the processing load and speeding operation; the company plans to increase the number of photosensitive elements in the chip to 1m in the future, and says it sees the part being used in vision systems for industrial and space robotics, remote sensing technology and development of automated substitutes for guide dogs for the blind – but a robot guide dog could never offer the companionship that comes with Fido.
