3D printing already allows replicator machines, but they aren’t exactly pocket-sized. Now researchers believe it could be possible to scan an object for 3D printing using a smartphone camera.

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have produced a proof-of-concept camera chip that’s considerably less than a millimeter square. If successfully developed and built into cameras, that would make it possible to capture the necessary data anywhere and then send it remotely to a 3D printer.

The chip, dubbed a nanophotonic coherent imager (NCI), builds on the basic concept of a digital camera chip but captures additional information. Normally each pixel simply captures the intensity of the light waves it receives, allowing the piecing together of a two-dimensional image.

The NCI directs multiple laser beams at the object and then analyzes the phase and frequency of the wavelengths rather than just the intensity. That allows the calculation of the size and distance of the various parts of the objects, in turn creating a three-dimensional image.

The system works because the light the NCI sends out has a consistent frequency and wavelength. That makes it possible to measure differences in the phase, which are caused by the reflections from the surface of the object being scanned.

This proof of concept only used a grid of 16 pixels, totaling 300 microns by 300 microns. They manually moved the camera across one side of a penny, shooting from around 50 centimeters away, and digitally stitched together the results. The image was accurate to 50 microns laterally and 15 microns in depth.

The plan is to scale up the chip to capture millions of pixels without having to move the NCI or the device into which it is built. If they maintained the same scale, a 1cm by 1cm square chip could house 284,000 pixels.

According to Professor Ali Hajimiri, who led the project, the goal isn’t just to add what would admittedly be an amazing gimmick to smartphones. He believes the technique could be adapted to capture data not for 3D printing but for incredible detailed motion sensors such as used in healthcare.