Scientists at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) have developed a “light-powered brain” that can recognise hidden information in complex patterns of light, potentially paving the way for faster communications systems.
The research brings together Wits University’s expertise in artificial intelligence (AI) and physics, demonstrating how light itself can be used to read information without the need for detailed images or extensive computer processing.
Published in Nature Communications, the research was conceived and supervised by Dr Isaac Nape and Professor Andrew Forbes at the Wits Structured Light Laboratory. It was led by MSc student Hadrian Bezuidenhout, with contributions from Cade Peters and Ram Nandan Kumar.
“Creating light patterns that form a large alphabets for communications is only useful if we can read them as fast as we can create them,” says Nape, the Optica Emerging Leader in Optics Chair and a Fellow of the Wits Machine Intelligence and Neural Discovery (MIND) Institute Fellow.
“Our work offers a simpler way to do that, picking out the information we need without first taking a detailed picture. This could help turn these unusual light structures into practical carriers of information for future communication systems.”
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