Researchers in China have developed a sensor that could reduce the amount of energy that drones and other autonomous hardware use to process visual data.In a study published Aug. 19 in the journal Nature Sensors, scientists detailed the architecture of a new 2D chip dubbed "LightTok," which can convert raw light into tokens used by artificial intelligence (AI) models on the chip itself. The device skips several energy-intensive steps that conventional sensor systems depend on, the scientists said. "Our design idea was to move token generation onto the sensor itself, allowing the chip to directly produce tokens that AI models can process once light reaches the sensor," Miao Feng, director of ...