Despite being the size of a grain of salt, a new microscopic camera can capture crisp, full-colour images on par with normal lenses that are 500,000 times larger. The ultra-compact optical device was developed by a team of researchers from Princeton University and the University of Washington. It overcomes problems with previous micro-sized camera designs, which have tended to take only distorted and fuzzy images with very limited fields of view. The new camera could allow super-small robots to sense their surroundings, or even help doctors see problems within the human body. Despite being the size of a grain of salt, a new microscopic camera design can capture crisp, full-colour images on par with lenses 500,000 times larger.

It'll take a long while before the camera is practical, but its size extends its potential uses well beyond medicine. Researchers envision extremely tiny robots that can still visualize the world around them, or self-driving cars whose cameras are virtually invisible. You could also have 360-degree smartphone cameras that take up very little space. And importantly, it takes very little effort to make these lenses -- the Stuttgart team designed and tested its camera in a few hours. Microscopic cameras certainly raise privacy concerns (there's a real risk that people would misuse these cameras for snooping), but they also hint at a world where size isn't an obstacle to smarter devices.