Pixelization of light emission and image recording

I recently read an article that described how our brains work in terms of vision. One key behavior is that neurons only fire when something in the field of vision changes. This is contrasted to how current digital cameras work that record full sets of data at each interval. The result is a lot of data. The brain research has already led to the development of cameras that capture less data and as a result can work faster and capture more information with less data collected.

With all of the talk about the search for the Higgs boson, one theme has been about how much data is collected. The detect-only-what-has-changed approach may provide some benefits.

Another article described a headlight that is meant to address the issue we see when driving in rain or fog. As everyone has experienced, the beam hits the rain or fog near the car and does not illuminate much past that. The proposal is a LED head light that can emit and detect small individual beams. These are then controlled such that when a beam is reflected in a short time interval they are turned off for the next one. The result is a beam that shines further than current headlights.