3D Scanner’s Tiny Size & Power

⊲ Tech Briefs ⊳ MIT researchers have built a low-power chip, named Gleanmer, that lets tiny drones and other battery-limited robots construct real-time 3D maps of their surroundings using around 6 milliwatts of power, comparable to a single LED. Presented at the IEEE Symposium on VLSI Technology and Circuits, the system-on-chip pairs an efficient mapping algorithm with dedicated hardware, representing obstacles as Gaussian shapes instead of millions of tiny cubes. It processes 640×480 images at over 88 frames per second and could support small UAVs inspecting HVAC ducts or lightweight AR headsets.
⊲ Processing over 540,000 coordinate queries per second suggests the same chip design could eventually shrink power budgets for AR headsets too. ⊳
⊲ Image – MIT News ⊳
www.simulation.news