ZEI Symposium Optics in the Digital World: ZEI Symposium Optics in the Digital World Networks International Scientists

OBERKOCHEN/Germany, 24.06.2016.

ZEISS offers a platform for Optics 4.0

Future-oriented technologies in focus: ZEISS networks international scientists and industry.

Optics enable digitization and digitization is revolutionizing optics.

Around 200 international experts discussed trends in optics and photonics at the ZEISS Symposium Optics in the Digital World. The keynote speakers were Professor Laura Waller from the University of California, Berkeley, Professor Ingmar Posner from Oxford University and David Bohn from Microsoft. All three outlined the requirements to be met in the future by research. These are being shaped by increasing digitization and Big Data applications and are determining trends in optical technologies. These include computer-aided image processing, processing large datasets in optics, obtaining information from data, visualization for augmented and virtual reality scenarios (AR/VR) as well as computer vision and machine learning.

The Symposium in Oberkochen networked international scientists and leading representatives from industry. Meeting in the ZEISS Forum, the Symposium participants not only presented the current state of technology, but also identified and worked out where there is need for action in strategic research fields in the coming years. As future-oriented technologies, optics and photonics shape our society, science and culture. Other new important areas include communications, sensors, illumination and medical technology. Digitization enables the manufacture of microchips with ever-smaller structures and therefore more computing power with increasingly small dimensions. Another exciting field of innovation is immersive microscopy with the newly available VR/AR scenarios for digitized Big Data visualizations using VR headsets, data gloves and other devices. The Symposium served as a blueprint for the digital world of tomorrow, actively advancing light technologies.

Identifying future trends and tackling these challenges is firmly embedded in the ZEISS DNA. The international participants have identified the following four trends for technological innovations:

Computational Imaging Optical functionality is being replaced or supplemented with digital software components such as with intelligent detection and image processing in digital microscopy e.g. with the ZEISS LSM 880 Airyscan which yields additional image information from previously unusable light. The result: considerably higher resolution and a multiple increase in sensitivity.

Machine Learning Optical sensors provide the data which are then digitally evaluated, such as for self-driving vehicles. The success principle of deep neural networks that will lead to self-driving cars and enable language recognition and textual translations on smartphones can also be applied to images, e.g. facial recognition or identifying cells.

Large Data Leading-edge optical instruments produce large data quantities that are evaluated intelligently such as via Big Data. One example is optical coherence tomography (OCT).

AR/VR Combination/synthesis of digital and real content, such as for visualizations in production for additive manufacturing and medical technology, interior design and shopping experiences. Data and 3D images from X-ray microscopy and computer tomography are utilized to compute virtual worlds, through which doctors and production managers can then fly using a virtual reality (VR) headset. Strictly speaking, these are not VR worlds, but real insights into the interior of our bodies and of complex components.

The President and CEO of ZEISS, Michael Kaschke, officially opened the Symposium in Oberkochen with a look back at the triumph of the smartphone and the beginning of the digital revolution for consumers approximately ten years ago. "One thing is clear: this digital revolution would not have been possible without optics and photonics," explained Kaschke. The relevance of optical and photonic technologies is constantly increasing. The internet, Big Data, linking the real and virtual world: all of these subjects are being advanced by digital technologies. "We are all experiencing how collecting, processing and visualizing data is progressing at an amazing speed and is fundamentally changing our everyday and working lives. Against this backdrop, UNESCO declared 2015 the Year of Light in order to highlight the key role of light in science, society and culture. Today we see what challenges and requirements still lie ahead for innovations in the future and in what direction our optical digitization journey is taking us."

The comprehensive results which were developed in three workshops at the Symposium Optics in the Digital World will be published in a white paper.

Michael Totzeck, a Fellow at Corporate Research at ZEISS, explained how optics first made digitization possible: "Here exponential growth is the norm. Driven by Moores law according to which the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every two years a current NAND chip consists of more than 100 billion transistors. These enormous storage capacities demonstrate the potential of todays light technologies," says the scientist. "For anyone not familiar with this concept: Gordon Moore proposed his famous law in 1965 on the basis of a 64 transistor chip. Today that would be two billion transistors. The word would is key here because this value was already achieved ten years ago, meaning the number of transistors actually doubled every 1.6 years. This is the simple, almost unimaginable consequence of exponential growth jumping from 2 to the power of 6 = 64 to 150 billion in 50 years. Optical lithography or photolithography is the key process in the production of electronic circuits. It has consistently reduced the size of the smallest structures on the IC. Thats why the so-called critical dime

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