ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,309,478, issued on May 20, was assigned to OmniVision Technologies Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.).
"Self-illuminating camera" was invented by I-Lung Lu (New Taipei, Taiwan), Jau-Jan Deng (Taipei, Taiwan) and Wei-Ping Chen (New Taipei, Taiwan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A self-illuminating camera includes a camera and an illuminator. The camera includes an image sensor and a first lens of a pair of two identical lenses. The illuminator is adjacent to the camera and includes a light source and a second lens of the pair of two identical lenses. The illuminator has a field of illumination that at least partially overlaps a field of view of th...