Wits team builds light-based system that reads coded light patterns
Researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand built a system that uses light itself to read information in complex light patterns. The work, led by MSc student Hadrian Bezuidenhout, appears in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications.
Dr Isaac Nape and Professor Andrew Forbes of the Wits Structured Light Laboratory supervised the work. The system passes light through specially designed layers that direct it to detectors, so it needs no detailed image. After training on 15 examples, it recognised 81 different light structures, including ones it had not seen before. It also kept working when the team added noise to the detector. This is early laboratory work, and the researchers say they hope to test it in quantum technologies next.