The company Foveon has developed an optical sensor that captures RGB data on each individual pixel of a sensor grid. This is a huge advance over CCD style sensors as it allows for much smaller full-color detectors (and thus much larger resolutions inside the given spatial constraint of, say, the human eye). As some doctors are currently developing techniques to cure retinopathy and related causes of blindness by attaching artificial sensors to the optical nerve this new sensor could potentially give a much better artificial sight to
afflicted patients. Uhm, not exactly Open Source but exciting nonetheless! The article was first found on Slashdot.