A new AI camera recognizes objects faster and more efficiently

The image recognition technology used in today's autonomous cars and aerial drones as well as tomorrow's cancer-seeking robotic medical devices, all depend on artificial intelligence. These "computers that see" teach themselves to recognize objects -- a dog, a pedestrian crossing the street, a stopped car or a cancer tumor. Now, researchers at Stanford University have devised a new type of camera system that can classify images faster and more energy efficiently, and that could one day be built small enough to be embedded in the devices themselves, something that is not possible today. "That autonomous car you just passed has a relatively huge, relatively slow, energy intensive computer in its trunk," says Gordon Wetzstein, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and (by courtesy) computer science at Stanford, who directed the research. Wetzstein and Julie Chang, a doctoral candidate in his lab and first author on the paper, have married two types of computers into one -- creating a hybrid optical-electrical computer designed specifically for image analysis.