DSLR sensors have excellent light gathering capability because most of the chip area is devoted to the CCDs. Point-and-shoot sensors devote chip area to extra hardware to allow reading out the pixel data even while the imaging CCDs are being hit by light.
This wobulation sensor combines the advantages of both types of sensor. This CCD sensor is made up of many vertical bands of DSLR style sensor. Only the "readout" columns are shadowed. For example, there could be 45 columns of photosensitive CCD sensors along with a shadowed "readout" column which is 5 pixels wide. This provides the sensor with 90% the light gathering ability as a true DSLR sensor.
Wobulation is used to move the sensor left-and-right. During leftward movement, the sensor is inactive. During rightward movement, the CCD shifts are synchronized with the sensor motion and the "readout" columns sweep across the image plane.
By wobulating the sensor at a rate of 30hz, the sensor is capable of live video.-- IJK, Mar 21 2007 Wobulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wobulation [cowtamer, Apr 21 2009] Jitter camera http://www1.cs.colu...ects/jitter_camera/pretty much baked, at least the moving-the-sensor part [notexactly, May 12 2016] Again, please?-- loonquawl, Apr 21 2009 Wobulation is used to increase resolution in projectors -- I think this might cost some temporal resolution, but bun nevertheless-- cowtamer, Apr 21 2009 Does this explain why when I rode my motorcycle in the rain, and the rain would bead up on my helmet visor, that I couldn't make any useful information out of the data I would see through all the beaded water, yet if I moved my head slightly left to right and back again repeatedly I could form a useful image out of the difference betweent the two images and thus survive to live and write this anno?-- normzone, Apr 21 2009 In addition to the jitter camera [link], I have seen a camera where the sensor moves back and forth along the optical axis while capturing, allowing for an oblique focal plane. I'll try to find it.-- notexactly, May 12 2016 I just came to this idea again, with the intention of posting that jitter camera link, only to find I'd already done so, two and a half years ago. But before I realized I'd done so, I read through the idea, and realized that it's not actually that similar to the jitter camera.-- notexactly, Nov 02 2018 random, halfbakery