Optical Tech Would Update a Robot’s AI on the Fly

Optical Tech Would Update a Robot’s AI on the Fly Atop a lab bench, Cornell Tech postdoctoral researcher Yifan He positions the lens of an optical receiver almost a meter away from an LED emitting a beam of red light. The computer monitor attached to the receiver takes a beat to refresh, then displays an array of squares that resemble a QR code.

When you hold your phone camera up to a QR code, light strikes the image sensor as only a first step to revealing the data hidden behind the black and white matrix. The receiver here is doing something different: Directly altering its own memory using the photocurrents produced by the beamed array of light.

And unlike the data behind a QR code, which might point to a simple web address, this.

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