Researchers from MIT - in
material science and engineering - are trying to develop fabrics that can capture images. And this
application is closer to reality than one would have imagined. The day is not far away when we may be able to wear our camera - instead of putting it on mobiles, pens and keychains!! What it really requires are sophisticated optical systems made of webs of (light detecting) fibres.
The use of optical fibre optics has many advantages over traditional optics:
1.. Optical fibres provide a distributed imaging capability over the entire surface of the fabric; unlike cameras, which have a limited field of view.
2.. Damage in the lens would cause the entire system to fail. In optical fibres, however, even after part of the fabric is damaged the other fibres still continue to capture images.
Needless to say, this sort of technology will find a great many applications besides clothing. In space technology, for the visually impaired, and also for providing location awareness to soldiers. Once the application has been made commercially available, other uses are bound to be found. During the process, even the (entire) rulebook on photography may need to be written!