Mt Spokane Photography said:
Patents for doing the per pixel exposure averaging have been around for many years. They refer to a patent from 2000, for example.
The novel thing about this patent is that it calculates blur due to the likely possibility of motion at the long exposure, and try to compensate for it. Sensors have progressed to the point where they can be better controlled at many FPS, so its a step towards actually being able to make something practical.
I'd still be skeptical about it being a practical thing to manufacturer, even if it can be done in a lab.
+1. Totally agree...not a new concept, many sensors out there today already do HDR in a single frame with either multiple exposures or other various tricks. This particular patent seems to trade spatial resolution for higher dynamic range.
Personally, I thought that Aptina's multi-bucket pixel concept was a better means of gathering more light than is normally possible for each and every pixel. Aptina's papers describe the use of multi-bucket to compensate for motion blur, but the additional charge buckets could also be used to flush charge from the pixel to subsequent buckets for longer, higher DR exposures, without the loss in spatial resolution.