Tuesday, 26 Feb, 2013 Technology

Today's laptops and smartphones have cameras that were initially created apart from the devices and were then integrated within them. But what if the camera was part of the display? Well, that could be possible in the near future.

A team of scientists at Johannes Kepler University in Austria managed to come up with a flat, flexible, see-though screen overlay that works just like a camera system.

The invention represents a polymer sheet with florescent particles integrated into it. When light hits one of the particles on the screen, it emits a typical flash of light at a certain wavelength.

Sensors that are located around the display (installed in the screen bezel) are the ones watching for these flashes. They estimate the flashes' relative brightness to find the area of the screen that is responsible for the flash origination.

If you collect of these flashes, it is possible to reconstruct an image, for example such as this one:

Currently the prototype is able to create only a black and white image with a resolution of 32-by-32 pixels.

According to the researchers, in the near future, with the improvements in software and better sensors, it would be possible to make significant steps forward in terms of creating images with better resolution and in full color.

[via Optics Express and Gizmodo]