Artificial vision system uses honey as electrolyte

Engineers from Glasgow University partnered with researchers from São Paulo State University (UNESP) and Hong Kong Metropolitan University to develop the system, which uses organic, biodegradable and recyclable parts to ‘see’ and ‘remember’ colours while drawing a small amount of power.

Their non-volatile Electrolyte-Gated Organic Field-Effect Transistor (EGOFET) system combines light sensing light, information processing, and memory storage in a single unit capable of mimicking the human visual system.

In the future, this could make it particularly efficient for real-world applications where fast processing of visual information is required, like autonomous aerial vehicles or smart security systems.

The team’s EGOFET is claimed to improve on some aspects of the performance of previous attempts to build artificial vision systems using silicon-based CMOS sensors, which require significant computing and energy resources.

In a statement, project lead Theodoros Serghiou of Glasgow University’s James Watt School of Engineering, said: "In conventional computing, there's an inherent latency from having to fetch and transfer data in CMOS-based systems due to the physical separation between the processing and memory units.