Researched
CMOS Image Sensor
At NASA's JPL, Eric Fossum's team develops a camera-on-a-chip in 1993 that uses about 1/100th the power of earlier sensors; by 2007 CMOS sensors outsold CCDs.
Open in the interactive tree →Fossum's team at JPL wanted much smaller cameras for interplanetary probes. In an active-pixel sensor each pixel converts its own charge to a voltage, so no charge is shifted across the chip; the idea dates to Peter Noble (1967), and Olympus built an early version in 1985. Fossum co-founded Photobit in 1995, and its PB-100 (1999) powered webcams from Intel and Logitech. CMOS sensors held 54% of the image-sensor market in 2007 and 89% in 2017 and are widely used in phone cameras.
Prerequisites
- MOSFET & CMOS (The Chip Switch)1959It is made on ordinary CMOS chip lines, together with its processing circuits.
- CCD Image Sensor1969It replaced the CCD that had defined digital imaging.
Unlocks
- Smartphone2007The phone camera uses a CMOS image sensor.
- Cryo-Electron Microscopy (Cryo-EM)2017Direct electron detectors are CMOS active-pixel sensors.
- Robotaxis in Daily Service2020–2026Cameras are a core sensor of driverless cars.