Stanford researchers create new AI-powered camera for faster image processing

Researchers from Stanford University have created a new artificial intelligence (AI) powered camera system capable of processing images in a faster, more efficient way, and holds a promising future for being applied to self-driving vehicles or security cameras. The breakthrough was published in the science journal Nature on Friday. A research team led by Gordon Wetzstein, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Stanford, combined two types of computers into one hybrid optical-electrical computer designed specifically for image analysis. The AI-powered camera system includes an optical computer in the first layer, which does not perform digital computing that requires power-intensive mathematics algorithms, while the second layer is a traditional digital electronic computer. The optical computer is responsible for physical pre-processing of image data involving multiple ways of filtering, which requires zero input power, because the filtering happens naturally as light passes through the custom optics.