Irvine to develop tiny digital camera

Engineers at Irvine Sensors Corp. in Costa Mesa, Calif., are designing an ultra-compact digital camera about the size of a credit card under a U.S. Navy/Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency contract. The preliminary design includes a sensing array, stacks of Irvine Sensors Flash memory short stacks to store digital images, and an infrared data transceiver from Irvine Sensors Novalog subsidiary to transmit stored pictures. The goal is to produce a snapshot camera with digital data compression and more than 40 megabytes of solid state storage in the space of about one cubic inch. - J.K.