The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has struck a deal with Lytro, a company that developed a high-tech shoot-first, focus-later camera, to use its light field photography technology to create new ways to explore outer space.
NASA is paying Lytro a hefty licensing fee of $20,000 every year to develop new technologies for its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena's California Institute of Technology, which monitors the Curiosity rover making the rounds of Mars right now. Lytro CEO Jason Rosenthal says in a statement that NASA is interested in Lytro's hardware and software to allow NASA to build upon the technology and develop camera applications that can be used in space exploration missions in the future.
The partnership will allow NASA access to the Lytro Development Kit (LDK), which consists of a 41-megapixel camera sensor with C-mount f/2.0 lens, the same sensor which is used in Lytro's Illum, the company's flagship light field camera for consumers that has at best received mixed reviews. The kit also comes with Lytro's prototyping board, image processing and rendering software and a Python API. Lytro will also provide NASA with upgraded development kits over time, the company says.
"We always believed that light field technology could benefit areas outside of photography," says Rosenthal. "Since Lytro's inception, we've continually been approached by a number of organizations wanting to collaborate with us on a wide variety of new applications."
Other early partners who jumped on board Lytro's licensing program include the Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate of the Department of Defense, which Lytro says is investigating the use of light field technology in night vision applications; General Sensing, a startup that developed a device to encourage hand hygiene; and an unnamed "major industrial partner that develops a range of products for government applications."
Lytro says it will continue its focus on developing light field cameras for consumers, but licensing its technology to businesses can pave the way for a wide-ranging set of light field applications. The company predicts its technology will be useful in areas such as holography, microscopy, architecture, security, video production and medical imaging and will eventually make its way to ubiquitous products such as smartphones and cars.
Those who were able to get their hands on Lytro's $1,600 Illum praise the camera's revolutionary abilities to take pictures while allowing the photographer to change the photo's focus later, but also point out that the software is still too buggy, an aspect which Rosenthal says Lytro is working on.
"Cameras should work much more like smartphones work," he says. "You should be able to program them how you want them."
