The company hopes to develop the sensor for a broad range of applications from consumer electronics such as cameras and smartphones to automotive, transportation, medical and machine vision and security and surveillance.

The sensor is based on a "new physical effect" enabled by the use of specially developed dye-sensitized organic light sensitive chemicals. The effect is complex and described in patent WO 2012110924 A1.

It appears to hinge on methods to measure the amount of light falling on a sensor surface and the direction from which it is falling while the light is chopped at two different modulation frequencies and with specific knowledge of the focal depth of lens. One key statement in the patent is that "The sensor signal, given the same total power of the illumination, is dependent on a geometry of the illumination, in particular on a beam cross section of the illumination on the sensor area."

Prototype 2:0 cameras for position and color detection. Source: BASF

However, it is a novel method that could be simpler than established methods. These are two or multi-lens triangulation to determine 3D position, which is computationally intensive, and time-of-flight measurements of light which depends on a modulated optical source, typically infrared, and is therefore not suitable for long range measurements where the transmitted beam can be blocked or dissipated by atmospheric effects.