In China, they just made the first 500-megapixel photo sensor. Put your mind at ease, though: you won’t find it on a smartphone
While electronics bigwigs are starting to unveil the first smartphones with 100-megapixel cameras, Chinese scientists are announcing a 500-megapixel sensor. That is almost 5 times the resolution of the human eye, estimated at about 120 Megapixel equivalent. But it won’t be a camera intended for smartphones.
Unveiled at the China International Industry Fair, the 500-megapixel camera was developed by researchers at Fudan University, the Changchun Institute of Optics, and the China Academy of Sciences. It will have a much less playful and entertaining purpose than you might think: massive surveillance in crowded places. In fact, it will be equipped with electronics capable of running artificial intelligence algorithms that will be able to identify a person among hundreds of others, comparing the photographed image to an archive of faces accessible in the cloud.
500 Megapixel camera: how it works
With a 500 Megapixel camera, it is possible to take very clear pictures of people’s faces even at a great distance and even in densely crowded places. Think of a stadium, a subway entrance, a public street. In all these places there are already plenty of cameras, but with much lower resolution, which does not allow for sharp photos of individual subjects in the frame.
With 500 MP available, however, everything becomes sharp. And that means the AI has a good quality image to compare against thousands and thousands of others in the archive. The result? You can spot anyone who walks past the lens, even for a very few seconds. No technical details about the sensor of this super camera have been released, but it would seem that it is actually multiple lenses placed close to each other. The overall 500-megapixel image is the sum of the images taken by all the lenses.
The world’s most video-surveilled country
It’s hardly surprising that this invention comes from China, nor that its purpose is public surveillance. Scientists say the 500 MP camera will be used to surveil military bases, border locations and other sensitive targets. But there’s nothing to stop the military industry from mounting this super eye aboard military aircraft or drones. Nor is its use for street and city surveillance to be ruled out: in fact, more than 200 million surveillance cameras have already been installed in public places in China.
In large cities like Beijing, a social experiment is already underway that is causing discussion. It is the so-called “social credit”: citizens are spied on 24 hours a day in public streets and their behaviors are filmed and recorded. Those who behave civilly receive rewards, those who throw a paper on the ground are detected and punished.