Luca Benini

Smartwatches measure your pulse with light: an LED shines through the skin, and a sensor picks up the reflected signal. By analyzing the fluctuations in this signal, you can estimate blood pressure, but accurate calculation requires a powerful neural network — usually running in the cloud, so data leaves the device.

A bee-sized quadcopter autonomously charts its route indoors, like a space probe through an asteroid field. Its camera works as a photometry instrument, capturing reflected light, while the processor decides where to turn at the speed of light.